Philosophy and Theorizing

1 Scanning, surveying, collecting, selecting, listing, mentioning of potentially relevant information and data and probably, significant facts.

Do (some aspects of) philosophy resembles theorizing? Is a question that requires to be dealt with in a certain context and against a particular, explicit background so as not to be misleading. Is there an object such as philosophy? Is there and object such as theorizing? Is the object philosophy or theorizing a notion (somewhere in my head so that I might refer to it, correctly or misleadingly, as an idea in my ‘mind’?) Or, are they also, in some cases, things outside in the external world? Can we be conscious of these cases? And if we can experience them how can we explain this, for example as qualia, a phenomenal experience? How do we arrive at the semantics of these questions from the experience and perception of the things (by integrated, complex processes such as discrimination, integration of information, focus attention on them and reporting them)? What are the mechanics of performing those processes or creation of those states? How and why do those processes give rise to experience? Will it assist us if we view it from, at least, two perspectives, from different points of view, for example as subjective (mental?) and objective (physical)? The former might refer to processes such as reasoning, knowledge, attention, memory, judgement, evaluation, decision making, comprehension, understanding, etc. Other words that we can include here are acquire knowledge, thinking, experience, cognitive, intellect, deduction, induction, abduction, and other modes of reasoning such as intuition, verbal discourse vs intuitive, (the capacity for) making sense of something, apply logic, verify facts, justify practices, belief. Are these things embodied cognition rather than extended cognition? Can all of them be included under the umbrella terms of consciousness (as a state of cognition) and a quality of awareness of being aware (by the ‘mind’)? Are human beings then mere skin encapsulated egos? Embodied egos that can employ, or act by, extended cognition when our minds are extended in an instrumental manner by tools – as individuals (persons) or as teams ‘minds’ collectively (as people)? Even the encapsulated egos might, even sufficiently or normally socialized, exist as an employ shared mental models. The latter might consist of shared knowledge, information or data and also acquired sets of skills for performing tasks so that encapsulated egos (individuals in the communicative reality of the cognitive society) can interact and communicate with others in a fluid or problematic manner as individual performs and/or members of groups.

These individuals contribute information (information dumping or brain contribution or dumping of intersubjective relevant data). This will probably occur in a dynamic manner that could affect the situation they are involved in the constitution of (for example as police officer or arrested criminal, two lovers, teacher and student, parent and child, etc). We can imagine endless varieties by this contribution to the situation or context. These contributions, if we were to develop a theory will be called the data that need to be ordered. Are there any constraints, conditions, limits, limitations to such situations? What are they? Can they be identified and classified or categorized? And can our tools for classification themselves be ordered and simplified? Can we generalize about the data we decide to include so that we can order it. We can for example express an hypothesis about the data as some kind of guiding principle – which aspects of the data to identify, which relations between the data, and other questions to be expressed in the form of a hypothesis concerning the data (and its ‘behaviour’ in certain situations, circumstances or contexts). We can do this in words, express it as logical propositions, mathematical formula, statistics, graphs, diagrams, and other forms of representations, etc. The (alternative) ways in which we classify, depict and order the data might themselves vary and thereby identify different patterns in or aspects of the data.

A useful notion here is that of Boundary critique (BC). It is the concept in critical systems thinking, according to Ulrich (2002) that states that "both the meaning and the validity of professional propositions always depend on boundary judgments as to what 'facts' (observation) and 'norms' (valuation standards) are to be considered relevant" or not.[1]

Boundary critique is a general systems thinking principle similar to concepts as multiple perspectives, and interconnectedness. Boundary critique according to Cabrera (2006) is "in a way identical to distinction making as both processes cause one to demarcate between what is in and what is out of a particular construct. Boundary

1 critique may also allude to how one must be explicit (e.g., critical) of these boundary decisions. Distinction making, on the other hand, is autonomic—one constantly makes distinctions all of the time."[2]

Boundary critique is based on Churchman's (1970) [3] argument, "that what is to be included or excluded for any analysis of a situation is a vital consideration".[4] According to Kagan et al. (2004) "Something that appears to be relevant to overall project improvement given a narrowly defined boundary, may not be seen as relevant at all if the boundaries are pushed out. Thus, he argues, as much information as possible should be 'swept in' to the definition of the intervention".[4]

This argumentation was extended by Werner Ulrich in the 1980s. According to Kagan et al. (2004) he "offered a detailed challenge to the idea that the boundaries of any system are given and linked to "social reality". They are social or personal constructs that define the limits of knowledge relevant to any particular analysis. From this position, pushing out the boundaries of an analysis, in the context of human systems, also involves pushing the boundaries of who may be considered a decision maker".[4]

In the practice of boundary critique, according to Ulrich (2000)[5] different kind of boundaries can be set based on different questions:

 Self-reflective boundary relating to the question "What are my boundary judgements?".  Dialogical boundary relating to the question "Can we agree on our boundary judgements?".  Controversial boundary relating to the question "Don't you claim too much?". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_critique

 Werner Ulrich (2002). "Boundary Critique". in: The Informed Student Guide to Management Science, ed. by H.G. Daellenbach and Robert L. Flood, London: Thomson Learning, 2002, p. 41f.   Derek Cabrera (2006). "Boundary Critique: A Minimal Concept Theory of Systems Thinking". ISSS research paper.   C. West Churchman (1970). Operations research as a profession. Management Science, 17, B37-53.   Carolyn Kagan, Sue Caton, Amisha Amin and Amna Choudry (2005). "Boundary critique' community psychology and citizen participation" Paper delivered to European Community Psychology Conference, Berlin, September 2004.  Werner Ulrich(2000). "Reflective Practice in the Civil Society: The contribution of critically systemic thinking". in: Reflective Practice;;, 1, (2) 247-268

Three other properties to remember when we depict and classify the data we decide to include are –

Kaplan, A. (1964). The conduct of inquiry. New York: Harper && Row.

Merton, R. K. (1967). On theoretical sociology. New York: Free Press.

Sutton, R. I., && Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, 371-384.

The author, and see the comments, have a lot to say about aspects of boundaries and their role in thinking here http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/01/19/boundary-condition-thinking/ The author Venkatesh Rao suggests that one can easily separate the three building blocks or dynamics, constraints and boundary conditions by mathematic or non-mathematical models by asking these three types of questions.

Historians are a great example. The best historians tend to have an intuitive grasp of this approach to building models using these three building blocks. Here is how you can sort these three kinds of pieces out in your own thinking. It involves asking a set of questions when you begin to think about a complicated problem.

1. What are the patterns of change here? What happens when I do various things? What’s the simplest explanation here? (dynamics) 2. What can I not change, where are the limits? What can break if things get extreme? (constraints) 3. What are the raw numbers and facts that I need to actually do some detective work to get at, and cannot simply infer from what I already know? (boundary conditions).

The commentaries made comments especially on the third one. I wish to distinguish between internal and external boundaries or limits at all stages of thinking and theorizing. The external conditions will often be explicit and what we will recognize more easily or be aware of, while some of the internal ones will be more implicit and not so obvious. The latter will include things such as attitudes towards the problem area, norms we follow, the limits to our knowledge and information concerning the problem (we will attempt to extend this by gathering data and information, but we might still perceive these things in a limited manner), underlying assumptions and other things or processes.

One thinks in some kind of general way through abstractions from the so far collected data, as if one goes through the whole ‘theory’ or perspective being developed (the frame of reference being constituted) in a very general way. In this way one arrives at some preliminary generalization or hypothesis. This generalization will be altered because of a number of factors, for example the ‘nature’ (characteristics of the type of philosopher dealing with them or the kind of philosophical handling they will be submitted to) and the stage of the theorizing (and the theorist’s conception of theorizing). Then one returns to the beginning of one’s collecting of data and information and selects, orders and classifies or categorizes them in terms of this preliminary generalization.

Returning to the end of section 1. There are both internal and external limits or boundaries to one’s work. These limits will vary for a number of reasons, for example the step or stage of theorizing the writer is involved in. The dealing with the problem itself, for example thinking (more and more in detail), the depiction of it and the writing down about and of it and other cognitive practices, skills, doings and extensions will be submitted to more and different types of boundaries, One factor that will cause this is the step in the exploration and the stage of the investigation one is occupied with. Some boundaries will be explicit and one will be aware of them while others will be more or totally implicit and one will be less conscious of them and most likely only notice some of the effects of some transcendental, implicit ones.

Some of these limits will be for example knowledge (of the are and problem being dealt with, of the nature of limits and their functioning), available skills (of know how), available facts (information of know that of the problem etc), awareness of relevant terms and concepts (and those one is unaware of), available and understood ideas (and those one is unaware of and do not, yet, grasp and involved), norms one follow and is aware of (and unaware of), values, attitudes, arguments being employed (skills ion argumentation and limits to these), reasoning, different types of limits that are functioning (and that one is un/aware of).

The different stages of investigation include the scanning and collection of data and information, depicting, organizing, classification and dealing with these data, the making of conjectures about the data, their interrelations, awareness (and lack of awareness) of and reference to relevant work, books, articles, studies, etc concerning the data and the problem being dealt with, making generalizations concerning trends in the data and developing hypotheses.

Let us look at some of the ideas concerning good or better theories in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory tells us that : A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed, preferably using a written, pre-defined, protocol of observations and experiments.[1][2] Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.[3]

It is important to note that the definition of a "scientific theory" (often ambiguously contracted to "theory" for the sake of brevity, including in this page) as used in the disciplines of science is significantly different from, and in contrast to, the common vernacular usage of the word "theory". As used in everyday non-scientific speech, "theory" implies that something is an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, conjecture, idea, or, hypothesis;[4] such a usage is the opposite of the word 'theory' in science. These different usages are comparable to the differing, and often opposing, usages of the term "prediction" in science (less ambiguously called a "scientific prediction") versus "prediction" in vernacular speech, denoting a mere hope.

The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, and to its elegance and simplicity (see Occam's razor). As additional scientific evidence is gathered, a scientific theory may be rejected or modified if it does not fit the new empirical findings; in such circumstances, a more accurate theory is then desired. In certain cases, the less-accurate unmodified scientific theory can still be treated as a theory if it is useful (due to its sheer simplicity) as an approximation under specific conditions (e.g., Newton's laws of motion as an approximation to special relativity at velocities that are small relative to the speed of light).

Scientific theories are testable and make falsifiable predictions.[5] They describe the causal elements responsible for a particular natural phenomenon, and are used to explain and predict aspects of the physical universe or specific areas of inquiry (e.g., electricity, chemistry, astronomy). Scientists use theories as a foundation to gain further scientific knowledge, as well as to accomplish goals such as inventing technology or curing disease.

As with most, if not all, forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are both deductive and inductive[6][7] in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability.

Paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian Stephen Jay Gould said, “...facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world′s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.”[8]

 National Academy of Sciences, 1999

  "The Structure of Scientific Theories" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  Schafersman, Steven D. "An Introduction to Science".

  National Academy of Sciences, 2008.

  Popper, Karl (1963), Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, UK. Reprinted in Theodore Schick (ed., 2000), Readings in the Philosophy of Science, Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain View, Calif.

  https://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic265890.files/Critical_Thinking_File/07_The_Scientific_Method.pdf

  Andersen, Hanne and Hepburn, Brian, "Scientific Method", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =

 The Devil in Dover, p. 98

Contents  1 Characteristics of theories

 1.1 Essential criteria  The defining characteristic of all scientific knowledge, including theories, is the ability to make falsifiable or testable predictions. The relevance and specificity of those predictions determine how potentially useful the theory is. A would-be theory that makes no observable predictions is not a scientific theory at all. Predictions not sufficiently specific to be tested are similarly not useful. In both cases, the term "theory" is not applicable.

 1.2 Definitions from scientific organizations

 2 Formation of theories The scientific method involves the proposal and testing of hypotheses, by deriving predictions from the hypotheses about the results of future experiments, then performing those experiments to see whether the predictions are valid. This provides evidence either for or against the hypothesis. When enough experimental results have been gathered in a particular area of inquiry, scientists may propose an explanatory framework that accounts for as many of these as possible. This explanation is also tested, and if it fulfils the necessary criteria (see above), then the explanation becomes a theory. This can take many years, as it can be difficult or complicated to gather sufficient evidence.  3 Modification and improvement of theories

 3.1 Unification of theories  3.2 Example: Relativity

 4 Theories and laws Both scientific laws and scientific theories are produced from the scientific method through the formation and testing of hypotheses, and can predict the behavior of the natural world. Both are typically well-supported by observations and/or experimental evidence.[27] However, scientific laws are descriptive accounts of how nature will behave under certain conditions.[28] Scientific theories are broader in scope, and give overarching explanations of how nature works and why it exhibits certain characteristics. Theories are supported by evidence from many different sources, and may contain one or several laws.[29]  5 About theories

 5.1 Theories as axioms

The logical positivists thought of scientific theories as statements in a formal language. First-order logic is an example of a formal language. The logical positivists envisaged a similar scientific language. In addition to scientific theories, the language also included observation sentences ("the sun rises in the east"), definitions, and mathematical statements. The phenomena explained by the theories, if they could not be directly observed by the senses (for example, atoms and radio waves), were treated as theoretical concepts. In this view, theories function as axioms: predicted observations are derived from the theories much like theorems are derived in Euclidean geometry. However, the predictions are then tested against reality to verify the theories, and the "axioms" can be revised as a direct result.

The phrase "the received view of theories" is used to describe this approach. Terms commonly associated with it are "linguistic" (because theories are components of a language) and "syntactic" (because a language has rules about how symbols can be strung together). Problems in defining this kind of language precisely, e.g., are objects seen in microscopes observed or are they theoretical objects, led to the effective demise of logical positivism in the 1970s

  5.2 Theories as models  The semantic view of theories, which identifies scientific theories with models rather than propositions, has replaced the received view as the dominant position in theory formulation in the philosophy of science.[36][37][38] A model is a logical framework intended to represent reality (a "model of reality"), similar to the way that a map is a graphical model that represents the territory of a city or country.[39][40]

  Precession of the perihelion of Mercury (exaggerated). The deviation in Mercury's position from the Newtonian prediction is about 43 arc-seconds (about two-thirds of 1/60 of a degree) per century.[41][42]

 In this approach, theories are a specific category of models that fulfil the necessary criteria (see above). One can use language to describe a model; however, the theory is the model (or a collection of similar models), and not the description of the model. A model of the solar system, for example, might consist of abstract objects that represent the sun and the planets. These objects have associated properties, e.g., positions, velocities, and masses. The model parameters, e.g., Newton's Law of Gravitation, determine how the positions and velocities change with time. This model can then be tested to see whether it accurately predicts future observations; astronomers can verify that the positions of the model's objects over time match the actual positions of the planets. For most planets, the Newtonian model's predictions are accurate; for Mercury, it is slightly inaccurate and the model of general relativity must be used instead.  The word "semantic" refers to the way that a model represents the real world. The representation (literally, "re-presentation") describes particular aspects of a phenomenon or the manner of interaction among a set of phenomena. For instance, a scale model of a house or of a solar system is clearly not an actual house or an actual solar system; the aspects of an actual house or an actual solar system represented in a scale model are, only in certain limited ways, representative of the actual entity. A scale model of a house is not a house; but to someone who wants to learn about houses, analogous to a scientist who wants to understand reality, a sufficiently detailed scale model may suffice.  o 5.2.1 Differences between theory and model  Several commentators[43] have stated that the distinguishing characteristic of theories is that they are explanatory as well as descriptive, while models are only descriptive (although still predictive in a more limited sense). Philosopher Stephen Pepper also distinguished between theories and models, and said in 1948 that general models and theories are predicated on a "root" metaphor that constrains how scientists theorize and model a phenomenon and thus arrive at testable hypotheses.  Engineering practice makes a distinction between "mathematical models" and "physical models"; the cost of fabricating a physical model can be minimized by first creating a mathematical model using a computer software package, such as a computer aided design tool. The component parts are each themselves modelled, and the fabrication tolerances are specified. An exploded view drawing is used to lay out the fabrication sequence. Simulation packages for displaying each of the subassemblies allow the parts to be rotated, magnified, in realistic detail. Software packages for creating the bill of materials for construction allows subcontractors to specialize in assembly processes, which spreads the cost of manufacturing machinery among multiple customers. See: Computer-aided engineering, Computer- aided manufacturing, and 3D printing o  5.3 Assumptions in formulating theories  An assumption (or axiom) is a statement that is accepted without evidence. For example, assumptions can be used as premises in a logical argument. Isaac Asimov described assumptions as follows:  ...it is incorrect to speak of an assumption as either true or false, since there is no way of proving it to be either (If there were, it would no longer be an assumption). It is better to consider assumptions as either useful or useless, depending on whether deductions made from them corresponded to reality...Since we must start somewhere, we must have assumptions, but at least let us have as few assumptions as possible.[44]

 The term "assumption" is actually broader than its standard use, etymologically speaking. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and online Wiktionary indicate its Latin source as assumere ("accept, to take to oneself, adopt, usurp"), which is a conjunction of ad- ("to, towards, at") and sumere (to take). The root survives, with shifted meanings, in the Italian sumere and Spanish sumir. The first sense of "assume" in the OED is "to take unto (oneself), receive, accept, adopt". The term was originally employed in religious contexts as in "to receive up into heaven", especially "the reception of the Virgin Mary into heaven, with body preserved from corruption", (1297 CE) but it was also simply used to refer to "receive into association" or "adopt into partnership". Moreover, other senses of assumere included (i) "investing oneself with (an attribute)", (ii) "to undertake" (especially in Law), (iii) "to take to oneself in appearance only, to pretend to possess", and (iv) "to suppose a thing to be" (all senses from OED entry on "assume"; the OED entry for "assumption" is almost perfectly symmetrical in senses). Thus, "assumption" connotes other associations than the contemporary standard sense of "that which is assumed or taken for granted; a supposition, postulate" (only the 11th of 12 senses of "assumption", and the 10th of 11 senses of "assume").  Note: I need to mention implicit assumptions underlying thinking, often the person ios not aware of their existence and their functioning.

 6 Descriptions of theories

 6.1 Philosophers of science

Karl Popper described the characteristics of a scientific theory as follows:[5]

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations. 2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory—an event which would have refuted the theory. 3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

Note: Make explicit, describe and set limits, boundaries, conditions

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. 5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks. 6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence".) 7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, might still be upheld by their admirers—for example by introducing post hoc (after the fact) some auxiliary hypothesis or assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory post hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status, by tampering with evidence. The temptation to tamper can be minimized by first taking the time to write down the testing protocol before embarking on the scientific work.

Popper summarized these statements by saying that the central criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its "falsifiability, or refutability, or testability".[5] Echoing this, Stephen Hawking states, "A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations." He also discusses the "unprovable but falsifiable" nature of theories, which is a necessary consequence of inductive logic, and that "you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory".[45]

Several philosophers and historians of science have, however, argued that Popper's definition of theory as a set of falsifiable statements is wrong[46] because, as Philip Kitcher has pointed out, if one took a strictly Popperian view of "theory", observations of Uranus when first discovered in 1781 would have "falsified" Newton's celestial mechanics. Rather, people suggested that another planet influenced Uranus' orbit—and this prediction was indeed eventually confirmed.

Kitcher agrees with Popper that "There is surely something right in the idea that a science can succeed only if it can fail."[47] He also says that scientific theories include statements that cannot be falsified, and that good theories must also be creative. He insists we view scientific theories as an "elaborate collection of statements", some of which are not falsifiable, while others—those he calls "auxiliary hypotheses", are.

According to Kitcher, good scientific theories must have three features:[47]

1. Unity: "A science should be unified…. Good theories consist of just one problem-solving strategy, or a small family of problem-solving strategies, that can be applied to a wide range of problems." 2. Fecundity: "A great scientific theory, like Newton's, opens up new areas of research…. Because a theory presents a new way of looking at the world, it can lead us to ask new questions, and so to embark on new and fruitful lines of inquiry…. Typically, a flourishing science is incomplete. At any time, it raises more questions than it can currently answer. But incompleteness is not vice. On the contrary, incompleteness is the mother of fecundity…. A good theory should be productive; it should raise new questions and presume those questions can be answered without giving up its problem- solving strategies." 3. Auxiliary hypotheses that are independently testable: "An auxiliary hypothesis ought to be testable independently of the particular problem it is introduced to solve, independently of the theory it is designed to save." (For example, the evidence for the existence of Neptune is independent of the anomalies in Uranus's orbit.)

Like other definitions of theories, including Popper's, Kitcher makes it clear that a theory must include statements that have observational consequences. But, like the observation of irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, falsification is only one possible consequence of observation. The production of new hypotheses is another possible and equally important result.

Note: creative development and employment of theories, as Weick says –p519 When theorists build theory, they design, conduct, and interpret imaginary experiments. In doing so, their activities resemble the three processes of evolution: variation, selection, and retention. Because the theorist rather than nature intentionally guides the evolutionary process, theorizing is more like artificial selection than natural selection, and theorizing becomes more like natural selection the more the process. Academy of Management Review, 1989, Vol. 14, No. 4, 516- 531 Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination KARL E. WEICK The University of Michigan

Note: the 3 important processes or aspects of theory that resembles evolutionary processes are variation, selection, retention. More on this later.

  6.2 Analogies and metaphors of theory  The concept of a scientific theory has also been described using analogies and metaphors. For instance, the logical empiricist Carl Gustav Hempel likened the structure of a scientific theory to a "complex spatial network:"

Weick builds his ideas concerning theory on this idea, as stated explicitly and explored by Cornelissen, J.P. (2006) Making sense of theory construction: Metaphor and disciplined imagination. Organization Studies, 27 (11). pp. 1579-1597. Through his many writings on theory construction and theorizing (e.g., Weick 1989, 1995a, 1999), Karl Weick has sketched an account of organizational theorizing as an ongoing and evolutionary process where researchers themselves actively construct representations - representations that form approximations of the target subject under consideration and that

8 subsequently provide the groundwork for extended theorizing (i.e. construct specification, development of hypotheses) and research. The most detailed account of this process is provided in his awarded 1989 article on ‘theory construction as disciplined imagination’ (Weick 1989), wherein theory construction is likened to artificial selection as “theorists are both the source of variation and the source of selection” when they construct and select theoretical representations of a certain target subject (Weick 1989: 520). Furthermore, in constructing theory, Weick suggested, theorists and researchers design, conduct and interpret imaginary experiments where they rely upon metaphors to provide them with vocabularies and images to represent and express organizational phenomena that are often complex and abstract. The various metaphorical images simulated through such imaginary experiments, then, are further selected through the application of specific selection criteria and possibly retained for further theorizing and research. As such, theory construction resembles the three processes of evolution: variation, selection and retention (Weick 1989).

Logical empiricist Carl Gustav Hempel likened the structure of a scientific theory to a "complex spatial network:" Its terms are represented by the knots, while the threads connecting the latter correspond, in part, to the definitions and, in part, to the fundamental and derivative hypotheses included in the theory. The whole system floats, as it were, above the plane of observation and is anchored to it by the rules of interpretation. These might be viewed as strings which are not part of the network but link certain points of the latter with specific places in the plane of observation. By virtue of these interpretive connections, the network can function as a scientific theory: From certain observational data, we may ascend, via an interpretive string, to some point in the theoretical network, thence proceed, via definitions and hypotheses, to other points, from which another interpretive string permits a descent to the plane of observation.[48]

 Michael Polanyi made an analogy between a theory and a map:  A theory is something other than myself. It may be set out on paper as a system of rules, and it is the more truly a theory the more completely it can be put down in such terms. Mathematical theory reaches the highest perfection in this respect. But even a geographical map fully embodies in itself a set of strict rules for finding one's way through a region of otherwise uncharted experience. Indeed, all theory may be regarded as a kind of map extended over space and time.[49]  A scientific theory can also be thought of as a book that captures the fundamental information about the world, a book that must be researched, written, and shared. In 1623, Galileo Galilei wrote:  Philosophy [i.e. physics] is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth.[50]  The book metaphor could also be applied in the following passage, by the contemporary philosopher of science Ian Hacking:  I myself prefer an Argentine fantasy. God did not write a Book of Nature of the sort that the old Europeans imagined. He wrote a Borgesian library, each book of which is as brief as possible, yet each book of which is inconsistent with every other. No book is redundant. For every book there is some humanly accessible bit of Nature such that that book, and no other, makes possible the comprehension, prediction and influencing of what is going on…Leibniz said that God chose a world which maximized the variety of phenomena while choosing the simplest laws. Exactly so: but the best way to maximize phenomena and have simplest laws is to have the laws inconsistent with each other, each applying to this or that but none applying to all.[51] 

 7 Theories in physics  8 Examples of scientific theories

Note that many fields of inquiry do not have specific named theories, e.g. developmental biology. Scientific knowledge outside a named theory can still have a high level of certainty, depending on the amount of evidence supporting it. Also note that since theories draw evidence from many different fields, the categorization is not absolute.

 Biology: cell theory, modern evolutionary synthesis, germ theory, particulate inheritance theory, dual inheritance theory  Chemistry: collision theory, kinetic theory of gases, Lewis theory, molecular theory, molecular orbital theory, transition state theory, valence bond theory  Physics: atomic theory, Big Bang theory, Dynamo theory, M-theory, perturbation theory, theory of relativity (successor to classical mechanics), quantum field theory  Other: Climate change theory (from climatology),[54] plate tectonics theory (from geology), theories of the origin of the Moon, theories for the Moon illusion,

 9 See also

 10 Further reading

 11 References

http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=165

Properties of excellent theories here Moss presents us with a very general description of good theories. As already quoted above - Theories should include the following properties (see Kaplan, 1964 & Merton, 1967 & Sutton & Staw, 1995):

 Theories should stipulate the order in which one variable or event might affect another variable or event  Theories should include a narrative or description that depicts why one variable or event might affect another variable or event  These narratives should refer to processes or mechanisms that might not be observable or conspicuous  These processes or mechanisms should relate to many constructs that were not assessed in the study and thus extend appreciably beyond a specific research project  Hence, theories should present implications that are not observable or inevitable.

He continues - According to Van Lange (2012), four ideals can be utilized to evaluate and to improve theories. Specifically: excellent theories demonstrate:

 Truth: That is, the theory should generate predictions or hypotheses that are usually accurate and substantiated.  Abstract: That is, the theory should allude to broad, unobservable concepts, assumptions, or principles rather than only superficial, tangible features. The theory should generalize across specific people, contexts, and processes.  Progress: The theory should include assumptions that challenge obsolete principles or introduce new principles and perspectives. The theory might imply relationships between concepts that would have been overlooked otherwise and, therefore, should stimulate considerable research.  Applicability: The theory should be relevant to many events and issues. The theory should be practical and helpful to everyday life

Moss then mentions shortcomings authors should avoid as stated by Sutton and Staw (1995) Sutton, R. I., && Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, 371-384. And reviewed by Weick - What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is and also by Paul J DiMaggio

Kayla Booth sums up Weick - Theorizing by Weick Regarding "What Theory is Not, Theorizing IS" by Kayla Booth lile this –

Kayla Booth "What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is" Karl E. Weick Argument Based on Process:

Theory as an end product vs. theory as a process.

Theory in the making! Conclusion The Gist Argument Theorizing Response to Sutton and Staw "Benefit of the Doubt Piece":

This is not theory because 1) The author is lazy 2) The author is not there... yet Argument Is Theory itself a Continuum or is the Process of Creating Theory a Continuum?

"What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is" or "What Theory is Not, Theorizing Can Be"

1) Sutton and Staw's 5 Parts are part of the process of making theory, reliant on context 2) Authors should articulate where they are in the process of theory creation, instead of calling it complete 3) Theory is a continuum 4) Nuances of language and original concepts may help further develop these components

Moss, above, sums up Sutton and Staw as follows –

Rather than characterize the procedures that researchers should follow to construct a theory, Sutton and Staw (1995) delineated a set of shortfalls that writers should circumvent. First, according to Sutton and Staw (1995), many writers merely include a list of references, such as "Extraversion is related to level of management (Smith, 1995)" rather than explicate the mechanisms or processes that relate one variable or event to another variable or event.

As Sutton and Staw (1995) contend, an allusion to a reference should not replace a brief but lucid description of why these variables or events are related to one another. Writers do not need to characterize every facet of the theory, but should certainly summarize the key arguments.

Second, according to Sutton and Staw (1995), research findings should not be regarded as a substitute to theory. For example, suppose a researcher wants to contend that extraversion is related to level of management, which in turn is associated with breadth of knowledge. To propose this argument, authors must clarify why extraversion might be related to level of management&& the finding that "Extraversion is related to level of management, as shown by Smith (1995)" is informative, but not sufficient.

Third, as Weick (1989) contends, classifications or constructs should not be regarded as substitutes to theories. For example, according to Sutton and Staw (1995), dividing variables into dispositional and situational is not a theory. Characterizing three distinct forms of justice is not a theory, even if valuable to readers. These contributions do not demonstrate how variables are related to one another. They do not demonstrate how various events unfold.

Fourth, a diagram that entails a series of variables, connected by arrows, does not alone represent a theory. Again, researchers need to characterize the mechanisms or processes that underpin each arrow--a narrative to explain why one variable is associated with another variable (Sutton & Staw, 1995).

Finally, researchers need to recognize that hypotheses are not theories. That is, hypotheses do not specify the mechanisms or processes that demonstrate how the variables might be related to each other. According to Sutton and Staw (1995), a lengthly set of hypotheses often indicates that such propositions were included in lieu of suitable theoretical development.

Arguments to justify these shortfalls

In some instances, researchers recognize their theories are not optimal, but rely on references, data, constructs, diagrams, or hypotheses to mask shortfalls in their arguments. Nevertheless, some scholars have proposed arguments that can be used to justify the legitimacy of papers, despite these shortfalls.

First according to Weick (1995), the hallmarks of an exemplary theory are seldom realized. Instead, most attempts merely represent approximations to these ideals. For example, according to Merton (1967), some attempted theories are merely frameworks, stipulating the categories of variables that are relevant to this domain. Other attempted theories are merely characterizations of various constructs, without any attempt to show how these concepts are related. Finally, some attempted theories are broader conceptualizations of specific observations&& for example, the finding that anger amplifies the optimism bias could be written as negative emotional states might magnify cognitive errors.

Although these attempts do not represent exemplary theories, they do, according to Weick (1995), facilitate the construction of insightful and definitive theoretical arguments. In other words, these attempts are still invaluable, even if imperfect. That is, these attempts to expedite the processes that underpin theory development: abstracting, generalizing, relating, selecting, explaining, and synthesizing.

Second, according to DiMaggio (1995), these shortfalls, such as a reliance on diagrams or hypotheses, do not compromise all categories of theories. That is, not all theories are intended to explain relationships between associations. Some theories, for example, are intended to challenge readers, highlighting paradoxes and undermining common assumptions, but not designed to explain broad generalizations, which are usually broadly recognized and thus somewhat unenlightening. As a consequence, no specific set of criteria should be applied to all theories.

Indeed, many of the criteria that define optimal theories conflict with each other, according to DiMaggio (1995). For example, theories need to penetrate a single issue, deeply and profoundly, but also encompass a broad range of factors, such as culture. Likewise, theories need to be lucid and clear, but also seem challenging and paradoxical. https://www.reference.com/world-view/characteristics-good-theory-f1ec4f7e40024887#

What are the characteristics of a good theory?

They should encourage further testing and expansions of the hypothesis. Good theories mean that others should be able to test them and, if possible, disprove them. This doesn't mean that theories should be disprovable, but that they should be designed so that they are neither impossible to be proved or disproved. In this way, theories should be made to facilitate further research and insights, not discourage them.

Theories should be able to predict what will happen from a given experiment. This is what gives them a better standing because their basis is not on pure speculation but informed hypothesizing. Good theories focus on the effects, not the causes of a phenomena. They are also never regarded as statements of fact, but instead of likelihood. Theories aren't regarded as facts because they are frequently revised and rethought. To say a theory is a fact, is to take away the notion that they could ever be further tested and reformed, a practice highly important and regarded by the scientific community.

Learn more about Logic & Reasoning https://typeunsafe.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/four-qualities-of-a-good-theory/

Four Qualities of a Good Theory

Posted: 2011/09/02 | Author: sl0wpoke | Filed under: conceptual explanations, interesting questions | Tags: epistemology, rationalism, theory of computation |Leave a comment

Generally speaking, there are two steps to using any model:

 Determine whether conditions validate the assumptions of the model. (“Is the model applicable here?”)

 If conditions do validate the model, determine what predictions can be made. (“What work can the model do?”)

The first step involves knowledge of the particular situation; the second step involves knowledge of the model. A useful analogy is made with raw materials and the tools used to craft them into something: the situation itself is the raw material, the model or theory is the tool, and the end-product is some information. As is to be expected, the quality of the product will depend significantly on the quality of the material, the power of the tools, and the skill of the craftsman who wields them.

The important difference between physical and intellectual work, however, is that intellectual work may produce “tools” that are not at all useful. It might be argued that this difference is not an essential one; there is, after all, no barrier to the manufacture of implements that function in purely imaginary modes. (One real example of this phenomenon is the production of “fantasy weapons”, e.g. extremely ornate blades that look very impressive but carry very little utility as real aids to attack or defence, and were probably never intended to provide such.) That said, intellectual work is able to produce its tools quite quickly, and some of these tools defy any practical attempts to definitively prove their usefulness. Rather than bring down the ire of any one discipline by making all the usual accusations that their basic theories are airy-yet-crude blunders, I’d like to constructively examine the question of what makes for a good useful theory. Here are four simple criteria to consider:

A good theory makes its inapplicability promptly and unambiguously known. This might be the most important feature a theory can have. There is always a very strong temptation to become so enamored with a theory that it becomes difficult to distinguish an elegant demonstration from a completely insubstantial fantasy. Physical chemistry, with its need for a huge plethora of quick-and-dirty theories seems to be quite apt at producing models that speak their applicability up-front and neatly hand off control to their alternatives when their presuppositions fail. Different models predict significantly different behaviors given different spatial scales and different temperature and pressure conditions, sometimes radically. While such a diversity of different views might seem cluttered and confusing from the perspective of assimilating the knowledge of the discipline, it is nonetheless quite easy to determine which model applies to a given situation. Assumptions (e.g. “this system behaves as an Ideal Gas”) are very clear from the start, and even though they incorporate known and deliberate approximations, these are accepted in a way that understands the imprecisions and their consequences.

A good theory approximates objects, not their relationships. An outstanding example of this feature comes from, of all places, political philosophy. John Rawl’s theory of justice (as constructed in his famous book of the same name) proceeds from an extremely idealized view of individual humans and the origins of social organization, as do virtually all other political-philosophical arguments. “A Theory of Justice”, however, stands out as perhaps the most compelling political argument of the 20th century; Rawls became famous following this work, and virtually every other theory that followed was compelled to address Rawls’ Theory in some form. Nonetheless, other theorists very extensively criticized Rawls for some unrealistic features of his model, specifically the extremely strong risk-aversion individual agents are assumed to display. These criticisms, though well-founded and justified, made Rawls’ Theory no less compelling. The reason is that Rawls’ Theory, though it overstates individual aversion to risk, very precisely captures the way in which individuals evaluate their position relative to others in real societies. This emphasis on relations between individuals stands in sharp contrast to traditional Utilitarianism, which presumes that individuals will assent to any social contract that maximizes net social welfare with no consideration as to how they will fare personally, a presumption very clearly at odds with reality.

A good theory tells you what it can’t tell you. A theory that incorporates its own limits can very rapidly and efficiently prune away lines of inquiry that are essentially fruitless. The example par excellence comes from the classical theory of computation, with its results on formally undecidable propositions. A beautiful example of this dynamic at work comes from the use of Turing’s famous result to demonstrate in just a few lines the undecidability of a static information flow safety analysis. While practitioners don’t very frequently encounter results from Godel, Turing, Church, Post, or Skolem, it is arguably because the theoretical foundation of

13 computation very quickly and firmly establishes the limits of what can and can’t be done, so that engineers need never be visited by the insidious temptation to construct the unconstructible.

A good theory rapidly makes new predictions from old predictions. This criterion applies to how much uncertainty is introduced by applying a theory, or alternately, to what degree a theory lends itself to computational procedure. It is precisely this feature that accounts for the unparalleled success of Newton’s mathematization of physics. Translating observed phenomena into readily transformable symbolic representations allows inferences to be easily composed with one another, which means that a theory can readily build on its own successes. While there is some danger that concrete realities will not fit well with their symbolic outlines, i.e. that failures will also build on failures, a theory that can rapidly turn over its findings into new findings will have the opportunity to propagate errors forward in a way that will eventually become conspicuous, and hopefully diagnosable. By contrast, a theory that cannot readily incorporate its own predictions as antecedents to new inferences is more likely to function as a kind of myth or parable than as a real producer of knowledge. While it’s essential to have a conceptual foundation for considering any phenomenon, and while such a foundation is a necessary condition for a theory, it’s easy to see that a theory, as considered here, is more than just a framing device.

While a definitive breakdown of what makes for a good theory is certainly an appealing goal, this short exposition is intended more as an exploration of the issues than as any sort of final word. Much, no doubt, has already been said on the subject. While this may seem too general a subject to consider for a computer science blog, it’s worth reflecting upon for the simple fact that computer science is presently faced with the temptations of a lot of new theories. Unfortunately, few of these new theories have gained any kind of wide use or acceptance outside of academic circles for the simple reason that they have thus far failed to demonstrate their usefulness in any compelling way. I would emphasize, once again, that this is especially the case for security. A good theory of security, hopefully, can make is applicability clearly known, precisely describe relationships between its agents, make clear the fundamental limitations of security (i.e. articulate the existence of fundamental insecurity), and draw useful conclusions. http://faculty.atu.edu/swomack/3023ch2/sld002.htm

http://www.tectonicsdrivenbyclimvariation.com/-the-characteristics-of-a-good-theory- hypothesis.html

The Characteristics of a Good Theory (Hypothesis) In the philosophy of Science literature there is an extensive discussion on what makes a good theory or hypothesis. My first introduction to the idea came from Aaron Ihde when I was a graduate teaching assistant for his course called "The Physical Universe" at the University of Wisconsin in 1961, but I have added a few ideas. Although not all agree with what I have found I think that theories should:

1.Explain any observations of phenomena or results of an experiment; 2.Be understandable to the interested lay person; 3. Be reasonable so that they are testable (some, like Karl Popper, say falsifiable and some like Francis Bacon that there should be the possibility that they can be disproved by experiment or observation); 4.Be economical or parsimonious (I call this Occam's razor) and 5. Be predictive or fruitful leading to new observations or hypotheses.

http://www.soc.iastate.edu/class/202/powerpoint/soc202.pdf

Characteristics of a theory

1. Explanatory function-account for or explain a phenomenon.2. usually stated in

14 propositions and concepts,3. good hypothesis provides a rigorous test of theory Dependent variable Assumed to depend on or be caused by independent variable .Variable the researcher wishes to explain. Expected outcome of the independent variable.Termed the criterion variable

1. What is a theory? 2. Correctness of theories 3. Good theories 4. The process of theorizing 5. A tutorial on theorizing

What is a Theory?

A theory is an explanation of something. It is typically an explanation of a class of phenomena, rather than a single specific event. Instead of explaining why there is a brown stain on my tie, a theory would explain why men's ties often have brown stains.

Theories are often expressed as chains of causality: this happens because this and that happened just when something else happened and this in turn happened because ... you get the idea!

Theories are sometimes confused with hypotheses, because both seem to consist of statements relating one variable to another. Well, it's true that some theories are little more than hypotheses. But good theories are a bit different. Here are some of the differences:

 theories are more general  theories explain why things are related, whereas hypotheses just say they are related  theories generate hypotheses; hypotheses are implicit in theories

As discussed in the next section, one way that theories explain is by providing a sense of process or mechanism for how one thing is related to another. This is very important.

Having a sense of process is an attribute or characteristic of a good theory. There are many characteristics that make a theory good. It is not just whether the theory is correct or not. In fact, the correctness of a theory is a very complicated issue, and is not quite as important as you might think.

Correctness of Theories

Unfortunately, we can never prove a theory right. We can prove it wrong, but can never prove it right. There are two reasons for this. First, it doesn't matter how many times you test a theory, there is not enough time in the universe to do all possible tests. So even if a theory has survived 100 tests, it could still fail the 101st test. In a way, the situation is the opposite of locating a missing object in a house. If you search for the object in the house and find it, well, it's definite that the object was in the house -- case closed. But if you search and don't find it, that doesn't absolutely mean that the object is not in the house. It could still be there, you just missed it. The same (well, the opposite) is true of theories. If you test a theory and it fails, that's it: it's been disproved. But if you test it and it passes, that's just one test. There may be other data out there, or other situations, that will disprove. You just haven't gotten to them yet.

The second reason you can't prove a theory true is that there is never just one theory that fits the facts. A theory is really just a narrative. A tale that explains. But stories can be told very differently. In a sense,

15 there are always an infinite number of theories that fit the facts. Think for example of Newtonian theories for the motion of bodies -- equations like f = ma. Those theories served us very well for a very long time. But now, we have replaced Newtonian physics with a whole new theory brought to light by Einstein. Was Newton wrong? Not exactly. His theories were correct as far as they went. They predicted the motion of bodies quite well: well, enough, for example to build airplanes that actually fly. Engineers still use Newton's theories to build certain things. But for other things, today we use entirely different equations built on a completely different understanding of the physical universe to do exactly the same thing. The new theory explains additional phenomena that the old theory didn't -- for example, according to Newtonian theory, objects should not change mass as they approach the speed of light (which they do), nor should time slow down.

Good Theories

Good theories have a number of important characteristics, including:

 mechanism or process  generality  truth  falsifiability  simplicity  fertility  surprise

Mechanism (or Process). A good theory has a sense of movement, a dynamic element. The feeling of understanding that a good theory gives is due mostly to having a sense of process by which one state of affairs leads to another. For example, suppose athletes tend to ask dumb questions in class. A bad theory explains this very simply: athletes are dumb. This is a bad theory on many counts, but one problem is that there is no sense of process by which the quality of the mind is linked to the stupidity of the question. What is the mechanism by which the questions are formed, and how is mind quality related? Contrast this with a much better theory: that athletes have to spend a lot of their time practicing and going to games, and so have less time to study. This has a sense of process: there is only so much time in a day, the more time is spent on sports, the less there is available for study, the less studying the less they will understand what's going on in class, and therefore the less cogent their questions will be. This theory is a chain of causal links, each one small enough that we can readily believe it.

Here's another example. Why do some people steal, hurt people, and spend their lives going in and out of jail? A common type of answer is something bad happened to them as children, or they had bad or missing parents (the old "came from a broken home" idea). We tend to think that whatever bad happens, it is due to something bad. But what exactly is the mechanism by which something bad happening as a child causes them to do bad things themselves? What is it about the way the brain works that one bad thing leads to another bad thing? That's the part we need to specify in order to have a good theory.

Bad theories often just give a name to the cause of something, without actually explaining anything. We are often fooled into accepting these theories because it's been given a name, which makes it seem real or credible. For example, suppose we observe that some workers work harder than others. What's the reason for that? Some people will say "motivation". They are motivated. Motivation is an inner drive to do something. But does it really explain anything or does it really just restate the observation? Knowing that working harder is caused by motivation doesn't seem to help us understand anything. It really just brings up the question 'why are some workers more motivated than others?'.

Generality. Good theories are general enough to be applicable to a wide range of individual events, people or situations. Consider the theory that athletes ask dumb questions because they spend so much time on athletic stuff that they don't have time for school. This is general because it should work for all athletes, not just BC athletes, and not just for one sport. Furthermore, it can really be applied to any person who has a serious time commitment outside of class, such as musicians. The basic idea of the theory -- the mechanism -- is that people with significant time commitments in other areas will perform less well on the area in question.

Truth. Unfortunately, theories can never been proved to be true. There are two reasons for this. 1) No matter how thoroughly we test the theory against data, there is always the possibility that tomorrow there will be some data that contradicts the theory. Just because the sun has risen everyday since we started checking, doesn't prove a theory that suggests that it will always rise. 2) Theories are just descriptions. There are always other ways to describe the facts that are equally valid. In this sense, truth is not a reasonable concept. All that is available to us is descriptions that are not contradicted by the currently available facts.

Falsifiability. A good theory is falsifiable. If there is no conceivable way to construct an experiment or collect some data that could potentially contradict the theory, the theory is worthless. Suppose you are trying to explain the pattern of heads and tails that come up when you flip a coin 10 times. Your theory is that it comes up heads when an invisible magician wants it to, and tails otherwise. How do you test the theory? If you flip the coin and it comes out heads, that does not contradict the theory because it just means that the magician wanted it to be heads. If you flip the coin and it comes out tails, that does not contradict the theory either, because it just means the magician wanted it to be tails. No matter how the experiment turns out, the data cannot possibly contradict the theory.

Theories like this do not really explain anything. You can't use them to predict outcomes, nor to do things (e.g., to build airplanes that actually fly). A lot of psychological theory comes very close to being non-falsifiable. For example, the general concept that employees in an organization work hard because of something called "motivation", is kind of like saying the coin comes up heads because a magician wants it that way. We can't see motivation. We can only infer its existence by its effects (human behavior). So if a person works hard, we say they were motivated. If they don't work, we say they weren't motivated. Yet we say the reason they work hard or not is because of motivation. This is circular: if they are motivated, then they work hard. If they work hard, they are motivated.

In general, any theory that explains human behavior in terms of human desires is treading on thin ice. In other words, if you study voluntary turnover in organizations and find that people leave organizations because they want to, you haven't really explained anything, and you could never be proven wrong.

To summarize, there are two ways that theories can fail to be falsifiable: (a) because the data are impossible by their very nature to collect, or (b) because they are circular.

Parsimony refers to the simplicity of a theory -- the avoidance of positing complex relationships when a simpler alternative exists. One reason for preferring parsimony is that nature seems to. Complicated things have more ways of breaking down, and less likelihood, therefore, to endure to the present. The other reason is that theories are useless unless they are simple enough for people to understand. Theories are sometimes called models, and the whole idea of a model is that it is a smaller, simpler version of the real thing. Models are meant to pull out the important parts, and leave the unimportant behind. The power of a model can be defined as the proportion reduction in complexity that it affords over nature. Too much detail can obscure the key things. Really complicated models don't actually explain much. The best model possible of the Earth's weather patterns would be obtained by constructing a duplicate Earth and surrounding solar system, exactly the same in every detail. It would predict perfectly. The problem is, the model is as complicated as the thing we were trying to understand in the first place.

An example of parsimony is chance models. Suppose we want to understand why almost all human societies have significant inequality -- that is some people are much richer than others. We could posit a number of special reasons, including supernatural causes like "God wants it that way", but it is important to realize that inequality is what we would expect even if there were no special reasons why it should happen. If we take 100 coconuts and divide them randomly among 10 people, there are only a handful of ways it could come out that would be approximately equal: but there are about 1030 ways to divide them so that there is significant inequality. It's just like keeping your room neat: there is basically one way of distributing all your stuff in the 3-dimensional space you call your room such that you would say 'everything is in it's place'. But there are millions of ways that stuff can be arranged such that you would say 'the place is a mess'.

The principle of using parsimony as a criterion for model selection is known as Occam's Razor.

Fertility. A fertile theory is one that generates lots of implications in different areas. Implications are important because (a) they are essentially insights that were not obvious prior to stating the theory, so they represent potentially new knowledge, and (b) they represent possibilities for testing the theory.

To be fertile, a theory pretty much has to be general.

Surprise. A quality of good theories is that they are interesting. This means that they generate non-obvious implications. They lead you to understand things in new ways. Surprise refers to the theory's ability to make non-obvious, unexpected predictions. A famous example is a theory that explains why certain countries have so many more girls than boys. The theory says that this happens, ironically, when people prefer boys, such as in India. You see, the probability of having a boy is different in different families -- it's a genetic thing. Now, suppose what people do is keep having babies until they've got more boys than girls, or they have run out of room. So if the first baby is a boy, they stop there. If the first baby is a girl, they have two more kids. If both are boys, they stop there. But if one's a girl, they keep going. The result is that families that have a predisposition to have boys, tend to have small families -- if the first kid's a boy, the stop there. But families that have a predisposition to have girls have enormous families, as they keep trying to get boys. If there were no preference between boys and girls, then there would be no relationship between number of kids and the sex of the kids: large families would be just as likely to contain boys as small families.

This paradoxical result is fun -- it's beautiful.

Process of Theorizing

Start with an observation, such as "white people and black people sit at different tables in Lyons Hall". Then create an initial explanation. For example, you might try out the idea that people prefer to eat lunch with their own kind.

Now think about your explanation in terms of the qualities of good theory, and try to make it better. For example, to make the theory more general, change "eat lunch with" to the more general "socialize with". Then check the other criteria. One problem with this particular theory is that it lacks a sense of process -- how does it happen that people prefer their own kind? Because it has no sense of process, this theory is little more than a restatement of the initial observation. It's also hard to test. It basically says: people sit at different tables because they want to. So if some people don't sit with their own kind, it must be because they didn't want to. Another problem with this theory is that it is not fertile. It does not generate interesting implications. The best you could do is predict that at parties (or any other social event), blacks and whites will self-segregate.

A model with a little more sense of process and explanation is: "People tend to do what they've done before. So if whites grew up socializing with whites, then they will continue to socialize with whites, and the same for blacks. People's earliest experience is with their families, who are typically the same color as they are." This theory generates implications much more readily. For example, it suggests that kids adopted at a young age by families of a different color will prefer to socialize with people of that color, rather than their own. It also implies that kids growing up in racially mixed school systems should not show as much preference for their own kind.

Theorizing is an iterative process of creation, criticism, and re-creation. It is also an art. Good theories are beautiful, and the process of creating this beauty is what art is all about.

For more detail on the process of theorizing, click here. http://www.analytictech.com/mb870/handouts/howto.htm

This material drawn liberally from Lave & March An Introduction to Models in the Social Science (some changes have been made)

Start with an observation. For example, think about being in college. You're in class, and the guy next to you -- who is obviously a football player -- says an unbelievably dumb thing in class. So you ask yourself: Why? And the answer comes thundering back:

 Football players are dumb.

This is a theory. It is not a very good one, but it is a start. What would make it better?

One thing would be to make it a little more general. Theories that are too narrow and specific are not very interesting, even if they are correct. So, we could say:

 Athletes are dumb

This is better, but the theory still has no sense of process, of explanation. It says, athletes have this property of being dumb, and that's why they ask dumb questions. Dumb begets dumb. Does that actually explain anything? Or does it just push the thing to be explained one step back? Why are athletes dumb? It's like when kids ask you 'Why is the sky blue?' and you say 'Because it is, that's why'.

There is also a circularity here. What do we mean when we say that a person is dumb? Practically speaking, it means that they consistently behave dumbly. We cannot perceive dumbness directly. The only way we can know whether people are dumb is by what they say and do. Yet what we are trying to explain is a dumb thing that they said. So in effect we are saying that they say dumb things because they say dumb things.

The really big problem with circularity is that it prevents theories from being falsifiable. For example, take the theory that if you perform the Rain Dance Ceremony and all the participants are pure of heart, it will rain the next day. This theory is not falsifiable because if you perform the ceremony and it rains, the theory is confirmed. If you perform the ceremony and it doesn't rain, that tells you right away that one of the participants was not pure of heart, and again the theory is confirmed.

A good theory has a sense of process. It describes a mechanism by which A makes B happen, like the way the gears in a car transfer the rotation in the engine to a rotation of the tires. For example, look at this explanation:

 To be a good athlete requires lots of practice time; being smart in class also requires study time. Amount of time is limited, so practicing a sport means less studying which means being less smart in class.

This has much more of a sense of explanation. When reading this account, we have a much greater sense of satisfaction that something is being accomplished by theorizing. Of greatest importance is that the focus of the story is a mechanism, not an enduring property of a class of people (athletes). This means that we can apply the same reasoning to other people and other situations. Let's rewrite it this way:

 [Limited Time Theory] There is limited time in a day, so when a person engages in a very time- consuming activity, such as athletics, it takes away from other very time-consuming activies, such as studying.

An implication of this theory is that we should also observe that good musicians (who practice many hours a day) should also be dumb in class. If we don't find this, the theory is wrong. This is in part what makes it such a good theory. It is general enough to generate implications for other groups of people and other contexts, all of which serve as potential tests of the theory. That is, the theory is fertile.

The essence of theorizing is that you start with an observation, and then imagine the observation as the outcome of a (hidden) process.

Here is another process that would lead to the outcome of a football player asking a dumb question in class:

 [Excellence Theory] Everyone has a need to excel in one area. Achieving excellence in any one area is enough to satisfy this need. Football players satisfy their need for accomplishment through football, so they are not motivated to be smart in class.

This theory also has implications for other groups of people, such as musicians or beauty queens.

Here's one last theory:

 [Jealousy Theory] We are jealous of others’ success. When we are jealous, we subconsciously lower our evaluation of that person’s performance in other areas. So we think football players ask dumb questions.

This theory has some interesting implications. For example, because we are jealous of rich people, we love soap operas which reveal how unhappy the rich really are. Similarly, perhaps really beautiful women get a lot of recognition and status, so others will feel that beautiful women are dumb. This would explain the widespread stereotype of the "dumb blonde" or "bimbo".

Choosing Among Competing Theories

We can use the fertility and non-circularity of all these theories to help test and choose among them. If the theory is specified clearly enough, we can essentially present a situation to a theory and ask what it would expect as an outcome. The idea, then, is to collect a set of situations which the different theories would have different predictions or expectations about.

Consider, for example, how football players should behave (or appear to behave) in class out of season. Will they still be asking dumb questions? According to the first theory (Limited Time), football players should not ask dumb questions out of season, because there is plenty of time to study. [Whether or not there is ever a time when football players are not consumed by the sport is another question.] But according to the second theory (Recognition), members of the football team should continue to ask dumb questions because they are still football players and still getting recognition, so they still don't need to excel academically. The third theory (Jealousy) also yields the expectation of continued dumb questions, because we are still jealous.

So studying football player behavior out of season should help to distinguish between the first theory and the other two, no matter how the data turn out. If the football players appear smart, then the Recognition and Jealousy theories are wrong. If the football players appear dumb, then the Limited Time theory is wrong. [Of course, we can make the theory more complicated: having limited time during the season makes them dumb in class for those times, which erodes their confidence and interest, so they that even when they have the time, they still don't study effectively, so they don't do any better in the off-season. We'll deal with that some other time.]

Now, consider athletes who do not look like athletes -- they are not unusually big (like football) or tall (like basketball) or fat (like sumo wrestling). Will they appear to ask dumb questions? The Limited Time theory will again clearly say "yes" because practice time is unaffected by physique. The Excellence theory will also say "yes" because even if people can't recognize them on the street, they are still fulfilling their need to do one thing really well so they will not feel the need to excel in class. The Jealousy theory would say "no" for most people because they just don't know that they are in the presence of an athlete.

Expectations Generated by Each Theory For Two Situations Question Limited Time Excellence Jealousy

Football players ask dumb questions out of season? No Yes Yes

Will athletes who do not look like athletes ask dumb questions? Yes Yes No

Once again, no matter how the data turn out, we will know which theories are wrong. Note that if the answer to both questions is No, that means that all the theories are wrong, since none predict a NO answer to both questions.

In practice, we would want to ask many other questions as well, even ones that more or less duplicate the expected answers for other questions. For example, consider how football players appear in schools where football is not important. Will they still be asking dumb questions? The Limited Time theory clearly says "yes" because they still have to practice even if nobody on campus cares about football. The Excellence theory also says "yes", because football is still satisfying their need for accomplishment. And the Jealousy theory would say "no" because we are not jealous unless football is a source of status. So this question has the same pattern of expected answers as question #2:

Question Limited Time Excellence Jealousy

FB players ask dumb questions in schools where FB is not important? Yes Yes No

Every implication of one theory is potentially useful in choosing among all the theories. For example, we noted earlier that an implication of the limited time theory was that students studying music should also ask dumb questions, because of the time they spend practicing their instrument. So what would the other theories say about musicians?

Question Limited Time Excellence Jealousy

Musicians ask dumb questions too? Yes Yes No

(I'm assuming here that people don't realize, just by looking at their classmates, who is a musician, and that it not terribly high status anyway.) http://com330.pbworks.com/w/page/28856798/What%20Are%20the%20Characteristics%20 of%20a%20Good%20Theory

What Are the Characteristics of a Good Theory?

Read: Gleiser, "The How and the Why: Can Science Explain Purpose?"; Miner, "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"

What does Gleiser mean when he says that science is about the "how" and not about the "why?"

What is a hypothesis, and how does one use it in developing a theory?

When Gleiser argues that Isaac Newton's approach "set the stage" for modern science to have a "very clear operational procedure," to what is he referring?

Gleiser says that science is hard enough just focusing on the "how." What does he mean?

Should we study media influence like Gleiser says we should study science?

What does the Nacirema article not tell us about the culture it discusses?

"The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs" (Miner 1). What overall point is Miner trying to make with regard to studying culture?

How can Miner help us better understand how to study media influence?

A good theory...

is testable

is predictable

is verifiable

predicts results which can be reproduced

can explain an effect but not a cause

can be disproven is not a statement of fact, but a statement of likelihood

invites disagreement, alternative, and better explanations

constantly undergoes revision and refinement http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/socialbehavioralfoundations/PDFs/Lecture4.pdf http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jpiliavi/357/theory.white.pdf

Different types of theories described, building blocks of theories variables and concepts, propositions; development and change of theories, paradigm shifts.

The above sources gave us their notions about theories, models and other aspects of theories and the process of theorizing, as well as characteristics of better and good theories and essential features of the process of theorizing. We will return to theorizing after the next section.

Philosophy, its branches, or nature, aims and purpose, methods, procedures and techniques and the main contemporary philosophical schools (or approaches) will be referred to in this section. During the exploration of the nature of philosophy the doing or process of philosophizing will be explored. Illustrations will be given to show if and where the doing of philosophy by these schools or approaches reveal aspects of theorizing, good, indifferent or bad theorizing. A possible hypothesis : philosophy/izing is (as if) like theorizing with some aspects of the process missing/ignored and other stages/features over-emphasized (as if they are absolute, necessities, essential to the process or methodology of philosophy) so as to dissolve the present problem. Exploring this proposition in more detail to reveal the implications, if any, of this for an understanding of this ‘hypothesis’. The ideal (of) theorizing, although all real theorizing are only approximate to this ideal (situation, process), can function as a guiding principle to investigate philosophizing. The pure theorizing ideal is merely the leading ideal or guiding principle (functioning as a principle or guide) during philosophizing in the process of doing philosophy, during philosophical investigations in an attempt to follow this principle but never to achieve it completely or realize it fully.

4 a) Let us look at examples of doing philosophy and what is said about it by philosophers.

I hope to write ABOUT philosophizing, doing philosophy and possible different approaches to and of doing it, decisions that are made during this process and underlying (explicit and implicit) assumptions that are made along the way and the (often mistakenly) selected (side tracks of the) path (method) chosen at different stages.

4 b)

By expressing the above I have already made many implicit decisions and assumptions, some of which I am sort of aware but others I have not yet realized. The consequences of ‘having’ those assumptions and of having made those decisions will determine many things that I will do, taking me to places where I am compelled to make decisions - that I am fairly and some totally, unaware of at this stage of writing down these (the fairly vague at this point) ideas.

I mention a number of different approaches to and ways of doing philosophy, this is to illustrate different philosophical methods and methodologies. I discuss certain aspects of them in between quoting them at length. I also give the entire contents of a certain approach, book or article so that the reader can see if s/he is interested in that approach to the socio-cultural practice of philosophy or not as different people are only interested in certain schools or types of doing philosophy.

See for instance Formal Methods in Philosophy Lecture Notes — 2013 Dr. Anders J. Schoubye.

At the end I again work through an approach that treats different methods and methodology of philosophy as if it is a process with different steps in it. The previously mentioned approaches, lectures, articles and Contents pages of books/articles etc can be seen to fit in somewhere in this final overview. This illustrates the restrictions of all these approaches.

Broad concentrates on or reduces philosophizing to three things or activities namely : analysis, synopsis and synthesis. I give some background details concerning Broad so to assist in the understanding of these notions of his, for example that he really was trained in science, mathematics and logic. He considered himself not to be outstanding in those ‘difficult’ disciplines so he moved to philosophy (becoming a professor at several universities in the UK). But his former training is shown in his ‘reductionist’ view and treatment of philosophy and philosophizing. He shows that certain philosophers reduce all philosophy, philosophizing and reality by means of these approaches (skills or tricks) to execute their speculative system of philosophy, like Hegel, or analytic, like Hume. His science background is obvious from his examples and dealing in depth with issues from science.

Broad, on his own admission, did not have “a philosophy”—if by that phrase is meant highly original philosophical theories, and a highly original way of approaching philosophical problems. He writes: “I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower.

Another, very different view on and interpretation of philosophy is that by Buddy Seed, et al in their lengthy (15 pages) presentation of what the life of the philosopher and the need for doing and living philosophy by everyone are. That article seems to be inspired by religion, more specifically Christianity (and Roman Catholicism?). It does mention a number of important notions concerning the true philosopher, real philosophy and authentic philosophizing. But eventually it appears, to me at least, as if it goes off into a flight or flights of fantasy or phantasy.

It will be noted that I try to write in United Kingdom English, but that other spelling than UK English appears in for instance US sources – I am aware of that but decided to leave it like that.

4 c)

3**

I can mention a few things that should serve as a warning to what I think, what I exclude from considering at this stage and what I imagine to be meaningful and relevant enough to write down now.

Three of these things are, being aware of the fact that it is said that - a)

Philosophy, especially at this stage, involves doubt and the sense of wonder - (This astonishment and wonder could mislead one, being over-enthusiastic, into following misleading notions and practices.

Plato said that "philosophy begins in wonder",[Plato, Theaetetus 155 d (tr. Benjamin Jowett)] a view which is echoed by Aristotle: "It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them." [Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b12] Philosophizing may begin with some simple doubts about accepted beliefs. The initial impulse to philosophize may arise from suspicion, for example that we do not fully understand, and have not fully justified, even our most basic beliefs about the world.

Note that in what I expressed above these things are revealed, namely that I wonder about and am filled with wonder as well as being astonished about certain things. But, at the same time I am, wise enough by now after years of becoming involved in such ‘philosophically’ relevant things and being trapped by them, suspicious of what I started to do here, again. I feel suspicious of what I do because I now know that I do not really know, that I do not fully understand what I am involved with by writing this. Why am I writing this, what are my reasons, what are my motives, what motivates me and what are the rationale for executing this.

First of all philosophizing to me always was a very personal and passionate affair - really one of the basic reasons to be alive, giving meaning to me life.

This is why I emphasize the wonder of this activity, the euphoria of having insights - and that arrives non-stop as I am a highly creative- and original thinking individual, apart from having an exceptional IQ, EQ etc.

Both the acts or experience of having or undergoing insights as well as the objects the insights are about fill me with endless wonder, delight and astonishment. Much of this concerns not yet conceptualized or pre- conceptual notions. As this occurs to me endlessly my life and experiences are very subtle, profound and vast. Because my life consisted out of such insights, sets of them lead to me insights and so on.

I reflect on these things, the process of insights, the things they are about etc, thus I grasped what is

According to Aristotle three levels of abstraction:

- First Degree of Abstraction: we consider things as dogs, cats, car, wood, etc.

(Natural Sciences)

- Second Degree of Abstraction: we consider things in terms of number

(Mathematics)

- Third Degree of Abstraction: we consider things as Being (Metaphysics).

Having different types of insights and from or in different discourses by means of different socio-cultural practices required me to reflect on them and distinguish them - meta-reflection, if not always meta- philosophically relevant reflections.

So what did I do with those insights? Apart from the fact that they created in my mind, or as if my mind and ways of thinking, having experience, perception and being conscious in general occurs in a very insightful, greatly differentiated and subtle frame/s of reference.

So what did I do with such insights?

After having an insight, we can do something about it, i.e. we can articulate, clarify and deepen our understanding of our insight.

- Fr. Ferriols mentions 3 techniques in doing something with the insight: metaphor, analysis, and other techniques.

He says about this -

Metaphor (compare what Weick does with metaphors in theory construction and Cornelissen’s eight optimality principles)

- use of something familiar, ordinary to articulate, clarify, and deepen what is not

24 familiar and ordinary.

Metaphor is very important because:

1. it fixes the insight in the mind

2. it sharpens the insight in the sense that:

- it clarifies the insight

- it makes us understand the insight more deeply

3. it enables us to understand the ordinary and familiar more deeply.

Analysis (something like Weick’s meaning construction, creation of new insights by conceptual and selection during through trials)

- We use analysis also to articulate, clarify and deepen our understanding of the insight

- analysis:

- breaking down into parts

- breaking down the insight into the different elements or dimensions which constitute it.

Other Techniques (compare Weick’s disciplined imagination)

- according to Paul Ricoeur:

- Symbol

- Myth

- Speculation (does this have anything in common with simulation? As employed for virtual experiments by Weick?)

We are given certain cautions for dealing with insights - Analysis could desiccate an insight

- analysis could dry up, fossilize the insight

- in other words, insight could cease to be alive, to be meaningful and relevant as one subjects it to analysis. ii. It is important to return to the concrete fullness of the original insight and insight should permeate the whole process of doing with an insight. Why?

- to vitalize the insight

- to keep it alive, meaningful and relevant

- to prevent it from being fossilized, from being dried up.

- To check whether the analysis, metaphor or other technique of doing with insight really leads to a clarification, articulation and deeper understanding of the insight iii. Insight is inexhaustible

- one can explore and do something with the insight in variety of ways in order to clarify, articulate and understand it

- but the insight itself is rich, superabundant such that it could never be exhausted by any techniques; none of the them could fully and completely clarify, articulate, and understand the insight.

- In every doing with an insight, there is a tension between: sense of knowledge/light and sense of ignorance/darkness

25 iv. The richness of insight is the richness of reality itself

- insight brings us to the very heart of reality, to the deeper aspect of reality

- reality itself is superabundantly rich, inexhaustible

- thus, the richness of insight points to, indicated the richness of reality itself

- reality as mystery

- there is a tension between light and darkness in our knowledge, understanding, appropriation of reality. https://www.scribd.com/doc/56238200/Lecture-1-The-Act-of-Philosophizing page 4

In the Throe of Wonder: Intimations of the Sacred in a Post-Modern World by Jerome A. Miller

“Insight” by Bernard Lonergan

This is the appropriate context to introduce false and misleading notions about philosophy, doing philosophy and philosophers.

"The Philosophical Enterprise" by John Kavanaugh a. Introduction: False Notions of a Philosopher and Doing Philosophy i. False Images/Caricature of a Philosopher

1. Isolated Thinker

- one who is confined, isolated within the walls of his rooms or sitting on a ivory tower

- one who tries to make sense of the world which he is isolated from and which he alone understands.

2. Great System Builder

- one who has built a great system of thought but now is relegated to obscure footnotes and erudite commentaries

- one has to cite him in one's footnote in order to be considered learned, scholarly but in fact he is difficult to understand.

3. Academician

- one who teaches courses in philosophy which seem to be not in touch with present pressing realities and to be irrelevant to the demands of the day to day life. ii. False notions in how a person conducts the discipline of philosophy

1. memorizing answers to questions which he himself never has asked or has ceased to ask or which should have never been asked or never cares to ask

- trying to remember what the philosopher said rather than trying to understand what drove the philosopher to say those things in the first place

- consequently, philosophy courses will turn out being a big mistake on all levels: experientially, pedagogically, and humanistically

2. isolated from other disciplines and sometimes reduced to the same level as other disciplines

- study of philosophy in general, and of philosophy of man in particular is

26 conducted in isolation from social/behavioral and natural sciences, and other disciplines

- thus, there is little connection between philosophy and history, myth, literature or arts

- Why? some want philosophy to be "science", a respectable discipline with subject and credential of its own. But as a consequence, it reduces philosophy on the same level as other disciplines.

3. Being concerned with the problems of "the one and many", the development of logical atomism, and linguistic or metaphysical analyses than with the fundamental questions of meaning and the horizon of his possibilities as a man.

- to correct these false notions of a philosopher and of how philosophizing is to be conducted, let us try to see philosophy as a Discipline of Questioning, Discipline of

Liberation, and Discipline of Personhood. ibid. pages 4-5

More details, analysis and points of the wonder and astonishment mentioned by Plato and Aristotle, especially in so far as the formulation of questions goes. How and why someone will ask questions and the wonder associated with this activity and developing the ability of this attitude towards all experiences, people, the world, situations, one self and others.

Philosophizing as the Discipline of Questioning (note: at a later stage we will deal with an author who uses ‘inquiry’ instead of questioning as the philosophical method)

- to understand the act of philosophizing, we must find out and understand first what drives, moves, leads one to philosophize as sheer human exigency, i.e. very necessary to human existence.

- What drives a person to philosophize is the inescapable dynamism and capacity of the human person himself to question and to seek answers to questions he himself raises.

- In short, at the root of all philosophizing is the pre-eminent personal affair of question-asking. i. Queston-Asking (Weick’s problem statements, requiring accuracy and going into details)

1. Question-asking is very common, at the heart of our day to day experience

- we could not escape, pass the day without asking question, without being confronted by a question

- we could not start nor finish the day without some questions

- Why? Because of our desire, our dynamism to:

- To be confronted by things outside of us (Experience)

- Know, understand the things we experience (Understanding): What is it?

- Find out the truth of what we come to understand (Judgment): Is it?

- Make decisions for what we do/act (Decision/Action): What should I do?

2. Different Levels 2.1 Horizontal/Superficial Questions

- questions of survival

- Where will I find money to pay my rent?

- What will I do to save myself from trouble?

- practical questions

- What will I do tomorrow?

- How do I use the computer?

- What shirt, shoes, pant will I wear?

- What are the advantages and disadvantages of VFA?

- scientific questions: Questions of facts and making sense of certain, particular empirical reality

- How does the sun produce its heat and light?

- How does a computer work?

- Are there intelligent life-forms outside of our planet?

- Why is there a rainbow?

2.2 Vertical/Depth Questions

- questions of ultimate purpose and meaning

- questions of significance and meaning that enables us to perceive order and harmony in the world as a whole, our place in the universe.

- E.g.:

- Where does the world as a whole come from?

- Why is there existence rather than non-existence?

- Why am I here? What is my place in the universe?

- Where am I going?

- question of truth/reality

- Is what I perceive, understand true? What makes it true?

- question of value

- Is it good? What makes it good? What makes us truly happy?

- These are ultimate, fundamental questions in life:

- deeper questions, questions we ask even if our superficial questions are answered; questions to which the superficial questions bring us ultimately if we pursue the inner dynamics of questioning

- questions whose answers have bearing on our superficial questions, questions which are the bases/foundations of our horizontal questions. ii. Personal Affair of Asking Depth-Question

1. I myself have come to these depth-questions

- I myself see them as questions, as problems

- They are really questions/issues for me.

2. The depth-questions are really of personal value to me

- the answer to these questions are of great value to me: significant, important, would make a difference in my life

- such that these questions:

- consume my entire person: my intellect, my will, my effort, my time, my body

- no let up till I find the answers

3. Starting point of all the depth-questions is my own person.

- behind, at the center and the beginning of all depth questions: questions about

MYSELF, AS A HUMAN PERSON

- Question of Meaning and Purpose: Why am I here? What can I hope for?

- Question of Truth: Who am I really? What are my potentialities? My uniqueness?

- Question of Value: What is my good, my happiness? What should I do? What is the criterion in deciding what is good or not, my happiness or not? iii. Conclusion: Greatness of philosophy lies in perpetual questioning

- philosophy does not begin with an answer/insight but a question

- it continues because we still continue to ask questions, particularly depth questions

- and the answers to our questions do not stop the question-asking but spur one to further search for a better answer, to ask for further, deeper or different questions.

- Thus, philosophy is music of the fugue: incessant counterpoint of questioning and answering them.

4 d)

The notions in this last paragraph (I refer to point 3 from the beginning here **) should be conceptualized more clearly and then analysed in much greater detail and depth. (As Weick suggests that accuracy and great detail are required when making problem statements) So on to certain warnings contained in c)

Jonathan Ichikawa, Arché Philosophical Research Centre, University of St Andrews reviewed Chris Daly’s

An Introduction to Philosophical Methods, Broadview Press, 2010, 257pp., $29.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551119342 here http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24675-an-introduction-to-philosophical-methods.

By the way see sentences 2 and 3 in the first paragraph that stun me with their beauty: “Even setting aside their notorious epistemological challenges, attempts to understand philosophical investigation” and " And more inclusive discussions of the methodology of philosophy run the risk of generating lists of tautologies - ...etc. - rather than informative treatments of how philosophy ought to proceed.” This OUGHT surely is another problem and a very large one?

Daly does not attempt a unifying statement of the nature or methodology of philosophy. “..... instead electing for what he calls (p. 11) a 'twin track' approach, considering particular methods and kinds of data that philosophers sometimes appear to use, and pairing descriptions of such methods with various case studies intended to illustrate them”.

I quote these reviewing statements as they express what I wrote above concerning my present writing’s ‘cause’, my astonishment and wonder, and that Daly wisely steered clear from that. What he does attempt, according to Ichikawa is employ a “restricted strategy does seem advisable; the nature of philosophy is best understood through methodologically reflective first-order philosophical practice.” (What is the nature of this practice? Does it resemble any aspects or stages of theorizing?)

Here follows Ichikawa’s warning and criticism of the shortcomings of Daly’s approach/book: “However, its proponent does run the risk of having little of interest, and little distinctive of philosophy, to say, thus succumbing to the latter horn of the dilemma set out above. Daly's book does, to some extent, so succumb.” Ichikawa refers to his 3 rd sentence in the first paragraph: “And more inclusive discussions of the methodology of philosophy run the risk of generating lists of tautologies -- believe according to the evidence, make good inferences, do not beg questions against dialectical opponents, etc.” (Surely there are other aspects of the methods of doing or philosophizing that are not mere tautologies, but that are doing different things and that have other purposes? Such aspects could fit in at different stages of the process of theorizing. That is, they are not mere tautologies but have very functions for the process of philosophical ‘theorizing’? If there is such a thing or if we can apply the word theorizing to what philosophers do or attempt to do?)

Ichikawa then criticizes Daly for NOT having done the following: "Daly does little in the book to characterize how he thinks philosophy might differ from other kinds of engagement. (How does it differ and from what other ‘engagements’? And what kind of standards or ideas will be employed to make such judgements?) The extended discussion of science in Chapter Six considers how science may bear on philosophy but does not engage with how it is and is not similar. He does point out (p. 1) that philosophers are unlike scientists in that they do not use laboratory tools to run experiments, but this does little to distinguish philosophy in particular.” He then states what Daly said he IS going to do: " Since the central puzzle motivating the book, as given in the introductory pages, involves the juxtaposition of, first, the propensity of philosophers to, to use Daly's term, 'make various claims' with, second, their neglect of laboratory experiments.” He suggests that: "a more forceful introduction to the present book might include a discussion of to what extent, if any, the questions raised are particularly pressing for philosophy.” Well Daly did NOT do that. (Are these claims made by philosophers hypotheses, or having the function and nature of hypotheses? Are they generalizations? Often they are merely the results of conceptual analysis and linguistic usage and not ‘theoretical’ statements or conclusions)

On page 11 Daly mentioned his approach: " he calls (p. 11) a 'twin track' approach, considering particular methods and kinds of data that philosophers sometimes appear to use, and pairing descriptions of such methods with various case studies intended to illustrate them. This restricted strategy does seem advisable; the nature of philosophy is best understood through methodologically reflective first-order philosophical practice.” (The kind of data philosophers use will be part of the very first step of theorizing namely data collection, or as some authors refer to it ‘brain dump’. But let us see what Daly means by the ‘methods’ philosophers use and if they constitute the process of theorizing or if they are merely one aspects of this process. The same questions concerning theorizing can be asked of the philosophical reflective practice. Is it the entire process of theorizing or merely some features of this process? Already we can begin to see that philosophers must study the nature of theorizing and the process of theorizing. Such investigations will assist them to reflect on what they do when they philosophize as they will be more clear on what they are doing and what they are doing at different stages of philosophizing or steps when doing philosophy – if they could compare such activities with the different stages of theorizing and the function and purpose of each stage in this process. Philosophers, especially if one sees how Daly interprets what they are doing, are unclear about the different stages of doing philosophy as well as the purpose of each of these stages, and when they are executing a particular stage.)

“The book comprises six chapters, plus a brief introduction and conclusion. Each chapter involves an initial set of methodological questions and consideration of one or more case studies designed to illustrate how the questions bear on philosophical methodology. (All this, a sort of listing of what philosophical methods and methodology are, appears to me very haphazard. This is why I wish to explore these things in terms of the aspects of the process of theorizing. Philosophers will then be able to compare what they are doing in general with this process and what they do at a particular stage they can compare to a particular step or stage in the process of theorizing. Such comparisons, a sort of meta-activity, executed all along their first order philosophical activities, will assist them to be clear about what they are doing in general and at a certain stage or in a particular context. ) For example, the first chapter, 'Common Sense', opens with questions about the

30 nature and significance of common sense claims, then focuses primarily on G. E. Moore's application of common sense arguments to philosophical questions, with particular emphasis on his infamously straightforward attempted proof of the external world.”( Did Moore execute something like virtual experiments, one aspect of theorizing? Does what Moore did here resemble aspects of thought trials and simulations with different ideas and aims in mind?)

"it was not clear to me why Daly chose the topics he did” one question

“and what unifies the work as a whole.” another separate question.

“The longest chapter of the book, the 62-page Chapter Two, 'Analysis', considers several attempts to analyze the notion of philosophical analysis and finds them inadequate in various respects before finally concluding very briefly (on p. 100) that the notion of analysis is not after all an interesting (This is truly and odd thing to say as ‘analysis’ has been for almost a century THE method employed by much of western philosophy. Perhaps Daly does not get very far in understanding the nature and aspects of the process and activity of analysis because to be able to understand it one should see it in the larger context of what philosophy is and what philosophizing is trying to do – its aims and purposes? If he were to view it in the larger context or framework of philosophy as almost some kind of theorizing, he might be ale to reflect in a meta-manner more meaningfully on the first-order philosophical activity of ‘analysis’. I write ‘analysis’ as to me it appears to be many things, this word refers to many different conflated stages and features of the process of theorizing. Aspects and stages that need to be distinguished, identified and explicitly conceptualized and not merely being lumped together as ‘analysis’.)

one for the purpose of understanding the methodology of philosophy. (But it does fit in somewhere in the process of theorizing, even if only as one feature of it) Although I agree with Daly's conclusion here, students engaging with the book will wonder, as I did, why we spent so much time on a question that was ultimately to be dismissed? “ another (type) question

"The third chapter is devoted to 'Thought Experiment'. (these are something like metaphysical variations, simulations and other aspects of Weick’s thought trials. Such trials have many functions.) It begins with general questions about the nature and value of thought experiments before giving brief introductions to seventeen well-known examples of thought experiments, plus a more extended case study of thought experiments involving personal identity. (Daly rejects the notion and tool of thought trials or simulated experiments as relevant to philosophizing. The mistake he makes is merely listing the seventeen different types, he should instead look at their function. Not merely in isolation, as one aspect, one feature of doing philosophy. If he were to see the doing of philosophy as resembling the process/es of theorizing he would be able to execute such observations in a much clearer and more accurate manner. Then thought trials or simulated experiments will be seen as relevant to philosophizing, as a certain feature or aspect of this activity, at a particular stage of doing philosophy.)

“Daly concludes: "chapter (pp. 127-8) with what he calls the 'tentative and speculative sceptical proposal' (what is the theoretical status, function and nature of Daly’s ‘proposal/s? Are they hypotheses? Conjectures or what are they?) that use of intuition and consideration of hypothetical cases (again, I wish to suggest that Daly makes this mistake, have this misunderstanding, because he sees these things, these techniques in isolation, while he should instead view them in context as one aspect and one stage in the larger process of philosophizing.) are irrelevant to philosophical questions”.(But according to Weick they form an important aspect of theorizing, especially as thought trials and virtual experiments. I would like to know more about these so-called ‘philosophical questions’. They are not mere isolated phenomena, but crucial tools and techniques. Furthermore they take different forms or have different functions ate different stages of the process of philosophizing That is why I state that they are not mere isolated phenomena, one type of identical object, instead, they take on many differ forms, or rather they are of many different – functional - types.) At least we can now exclude them as relevant and necessary to philosophizing and philosophical methodology!

" Daly suggests that we dispense with thought experiments and intuitions and observe only that knowledge and reliably produced true belief are in fact coextensive. (To me it seems as if Daly here merely repeats uncritically some notion from philosophical history as if it is a universal and absolute truth, without detailing it or arguing for it. And to reject the crucial tools of thought experiments and ‘intuitions’ - whatever this word means, it need to be analysed to discover what it means and how it functions in this context as Weick also asserts it positive value - on the basis of that notion – knowledge is true belief or vice versa – is not very enlightening and unsound.) Then we may infer to the best explanation that they are identical. This very radical suggestion raises many serious questions which go unaddressed.....” (Here Daly states generalizations and unfounded hypotheses.)

Ichikawa questions Daly on the following: "can one correlate actual cases of knowledge to reliably produced true belief without making use of the sorts of intuitions Daly wants to set aside?” Ichikawa gives a suggestion by means of a question that, he thinks, refutes what Daly states. This is not very important to me. The following is his judgement on Daly’s hypothesis of/for setting intuitions aside. “The two paragraphs Daly devotes to his 'sceptical proposal' --.... -- are not adequate to the extreme view articulated,” (Note that in chapter Four Daly does deal with hypotheses and their selection. He does not deal with this in detail but instead comes to a conclusion that simplicity for selecting hypotheses are too restricted a standard, so I suppose we have to employ complexity as standard to evaluate hypotheses? Weick deals with this when he describes judgment of conjectures, employing the application of selection criteria).

"Next is Chapter Four, 'Simplicity', which examines how considerations of simplicity and complexity bear on appropriate selection of hypotheses; the main focus is on various interpretations of Occam's Razor. Daly's conclusion here (p. 152) is that given the various notions of simplicity available, and given the availability of reasons to tolerate complex hypotheses, considerations of simplicity are 'quite restricted' in their applicability to philosophical methodology.” I personally cannot see the point and relevance of this?

"In Chapter Five ('Explanation'), Daly considers the extent to which philosophical theories do and should explain. (Here Daly use the word theory for philosophical ‘systems’.) In particular, he considers the suggestion that, when choosing between hypotheses, we should select that which offers the best explanation of the relevant phenomena. (Here he talks about choosing between hypotheses and selection of the best one because it gives the best explanation. But there is much more than this choosing on the basis of the best explanation – Weick talks about conjectures and their refutation and judgement. This is a complex issue and requires detailed investigation so as to develop an idea and understanding of how hypotheses function, what they are and what their elation with the ‘things to be explained are’. Merely stating that one or some hypotheses can give a better ‘explanation’ is not good enough. Some of the questions that need to be asked are: how does hypotheses explain, explain what? Selected data, domains, collections or contexts of data, and what is the nature of the explanatory relationship between hypotheses and ‘the data’ it explains? In other words, how are hypotheses related to the data or things it explains?) Of course, there are difficult and interesting questions about just what explanation consists in, how to distinguish cases of explanation from non-explanation, and how to determine which of various competing explanations is in the relevant sense 'better'. (Here my own questions about explanation are stated by Ichikawa as well.) Daly says little about these questions, noting (p. 180) that 'the strategy of inference to the best explanation needs to be supplemented not only by detailed accounts of each of the theoretical virtues, but also by a detailed account of how to make a rational theory choice in [various cases].' (This is a very important point – a rational choice. How will this work, what will be the standard to make such a choice? Daly glosses over all the complex questions concerning explanation to the theoretical virtues of – whatever that means? Explanation as one tool at a certain stage of the process of theorizing? – and the tool of ‘rational theory choice’. A number of complex issues are covered by this notion, for example: rational, theory, rational theory, choice, rational theory choice. These complex notions need to be analysed in detail and it is necessary to take note of investigations in the areas of rational choice theory. An ‘how’ to make a rational theory choice? At what stage of their ‘analysis’ or doing philosophy will philosophers employ this rational theory choice tool? Will or do they analyse what the nature of this tool is on every occasion and in each context they employ it? What are the standards employed by rational theory choice tools? And what arguments can be made, in each context, for its valid use? )

This is surely right; but absent any such detailed account -- or even a vague, impressionistic account -- the suggestion threatens to be all but empty.” Again I fail to see any significant point in this for philosophical methodology. (Here my own questions and queries concerning rational choice theory tools are summed up.)

"Chapter Six, 'Science', is not about science per se, but instead considers the bearing of science on philosophy. The bulk of the chapter consists in putting forward and criticizing arguments for naturalism, which Daly officially characterizes as 'The view that scientific methods and results are valuable, or even indispensable, to philosophy.' I would like to know more about the reasons for this claim and in which ways such things are indispensable, functional, useful to philosophy? Do they keep philosophers informed in general and/or about the approaches of sciences, or about particular results, facts from, science? (I also would like to know what Daly here means by scientific methods? And in which ways are they, and their results, valuable, meaningful, functional and useful to the philosophical discourse, the practice of philosophizing and philosophical ‘knowledge’ and understanding? Are scientific results valuable and indispensable to philosophy and philosophizing? How are they? How are they connected to these philosophical practices and understanding?)

“However, he also cautions the reader that 'no single view can be identified with naturalism.' (p. 188) Unfortunately, in much of the ensuing discussion, Daly does not keep various naturalist theses distinct, in several dimensions. For instance, Daly argues against naturalizing epistemology in part by claiming (p. 199) that the psychological claims that might be of relevance to epistemology -- our susceptibility to various errors in perception, reasoning, etc. -- consist largely in 'something we already knew, at least in broad outline'. While this may provide some insulation against the methodological suggestion that one must formally study psychology in order to do epistemology responsibly, it does not show, as Daly suggests it does, that scientific information is not relevant to epistemology. This point is particularly clear if one considers how, by parity of reasoning, one could argue from the fact cited above -- common sense already told us that we perform less well epistemically in certain kinds of environments -- that the data provided by science is not relevant to cognitive psychology. In both cases, philosophy and cognitive psychology, that common sense already delivered the broad outlines of the relevant information is a non sequitur with respect to the general bearing of scientific evidence.

Daly also seems at times to conflate the suggestion that scientific work bears on philosophical questions ('it is perfectly appropriate to draw on the resources (e.g.) of science', p. 200, quoting Hilary Kornblith) with the suggestion that scientific evidence and methodology are sufficient for resolving the relevant philosophical questions (a 'discipline or theory can generate a problem but it does not follow that its resources are sufficient to solve that problem', p. 202).” This seems a bit confusing to me. To me the more serious question is - which aspects of science, science’s methods, methodologies are relevant to philosophy/izing and why is it the case, how does it work?

"After these six chapters, Daly gives a three-and-a-half page conclusion that puts forward two more general ideas about philosophy.

The first is that although there is philosophical debate about what data and methods are appropriate to the practice of philosophy (of course there is and there will always be as it depends on particular cases and it is impossible to generalize outside a specific contact which data and which method are applicable to the doing of philosophy in a particular context at a specific stage of the doing of philosophy), it is permissible when engaging in first-order philosophy to proceed from contentious or debatable assumptions” I cannot accept the latter as one would have to look at particular cases of such debatable assumptions. (One would first of all have to explore the nature of assumptions and how they function. Then one would have to investigate the nature of a particular assumption, its functions and the implications of accepting and employing it in a specific philosophical context.)

."This claim does sit in some obvious prima facie tension with various accusations throughout the book -- for instance, on pp. 27, 33, 115, and 177 -- that certain arguments beg questions in pernicious ways, and with the statement on p. 115 that 'begging the question is a defect in any piece of reasoning'. This tension is not explored.[1]

The second idea of the conclusion is that often a method of cost-benefit analysis is appropriate to choosing between philosophical theories. (It is essential to investigate what this means, to identify meaningful, if any, aspects of this statements and then develop and re-state them in a clear manner.) This idea, while plausible and useful, is not obviously connected to or developed from the discussion of the main text.” Ichikawa questions Daly’s suggestion or statement on other grounds, namely that Daly itself contradicted it earlier in his book. I cannot see the point of Daly’s second idea, while Ichikawa is concerned about the fact that it is/was not developed in the main text. The latter to me is irrelevant as the whole second idea, as it stands, is irrelevant to philosophizing. If Daly took note of the process of theorizing and its different aspects and stages and tools being employed at those stages he would not need to make this bizarre statement. ‘Choosing between’ philosophical, or any type, of theories is complex. This statements appears to be meta-theoretical, as when working in terms of or internally to the process of theorizing one does not have such theories to choose between. It requires a theoretical enquiry of its own, during which standards for choosing between theories will be suggested, as data to be investigated and then the entire process of theorizing will be executed so as to investigate and theorize about the nature of ‘choosing between…’ theories. However one would have to know which particular theories in what context one will have to choose between and what the standards for making such choices are. Furthermore, I did not know that philosophy has theories? What are these philosophical theories? Do they consist of proven hypotheses? Are they generalizations? How did they come about?

In general, Daly's writing style is reasonably clear, although he does tend to transition rather suddenly from general conversational tones to more technical ones that might confuse or intimidate students. This happens most often when he draws on work from other academics that speaks to the issues he has introduced.” This point I have often seen in philosophical writing - employing the work of other academics, so as not to have to argue for a certain ‘idea’. But is IT a (useful? meaningful?) “philosophical” (writing) tool (I suppose?).

“this often includes the incorporation of direct quotation, which is not always clearly extracted or explained”

This is one, of several, ways of academic writing that Sutton and Staw questioned in ‘Theory or not” and is dealt with somewhere else in this article.

Ichikawa then writes more on this criticism and continues with it below:

“Although Daly notes that this cannot constitute a criterion for common sense, since some Moorean certainties are not directly observational (the earth has existed for centuries, etc.), he suggests -- citing, but not explaining (another issue dealt with by Sutton and Staw), Campbell -- that the empirical questions might nevertheless help. Few students at an introductory level could, I suspect, engage this passage with anything like full clarity without quite a lot of guidance. This is a representative pattern that occurs many times in the book. (E.g., a detour from common sense into a discussion of Michael Dummett and a distinction between belief and acceptance on p. 19; a presentation of Steven Rieber's application of a technical notion of semantic structure to bear on questions of analysis on p. 66; the consideration of a dialectic between Kathleen Wilkes and James Robert Brown on personal identity on p. 118.)

More advanced students or researchers will have an easier time following these parts of the book, but they, I think, will be frustrated by the superficial treatments of the interesting issues raised in the case studies. And in some instances, these latter seem also to involve philosophical errors and confusions (for example, in the

34 discussions of the Euthyphro’s famous argument about piety and god-lovedness and of David Lewis’s modal realism).

The book would also have benefitted from more careful editing; there are a surprising number of typos -- including one on the first page of the introduction -- and grammatical/structural errors. These are not serious philosophical matters, of course, and would easily be fixed; I mention them because an introductory text read by philosophy students will provide a model for their own writing, and it is best to expose them to writing of the highest technical quality.

An Introduction to Philosophical Methods does touch upon many issues worthy of engagement, and Daly does seem to have done well in selecting the relevant literature to consider with respect to each of his chosen topics. As a result, the references and bibliography in this book will be useful for philosophers looking for guidance in their early research efforts. But with respect to its central aim as an introduction to philosophical methodology, the book falls short.

My own problem with Daly is that he does not take note of the nature of the process of theorizing and work on this topic. If he read about the nature and the process of theorizing he would have perceived and executed his book in a different manner. He does not have to agree with or accept my idea that philosophizing reveals many aspects of the process of theorizing, but some of his main ideas fits in somewhere on the continuum and in the process of theorizing and he does mention the word theory and even philosophical theory in a few places in his book. If he knew even a little about the stages of theorizing he would have been aware when he dealt with an issue that really expresses a certain feature or stage of theorizing and that their do exist, are institutionalized, terms for the issue he deals with. In short he and others should inform themselves about theorizing, the general stages of the process of theorizing and some of the terms that are employed for features of this phenomena.

[1] Daly suggests (p. 158) that 'tension' in contexts like this is 'a weasel word' that should be avoided because it is unclear what exactly it is meant to convey. I do not agree that this sort of language is in general inappropriately vague. At any rate, in this instance, when I say that these elements of Daly's view are 'in tension,' I mean that there is sufficient prima facie conflict such that someone averring both views ought to recognize that they constitute a surprising conjunction and remark on how, contrary to appearance, they may be consistent and mutually well-motivated. I suspect this is approximately what most philosophers mean when they say that various claims are 'in tension' with one another.” So clarify what they DO mean. d

I quote, with my highlights, what I consider to be distracting in philosophizing. This person refers to these things that I object to as philosophical methods. I object to them when you see the contexts he employs them in and the topics he applies them to. Philosophical methods? Strategies? Technique for/of Reasoning and explanation? He uses these different philosophical ‘methods’ (he calls them) in isolation. I would refer to them as techniques or tools. Furthermore, they should not be seen in isolation – as useful tools in particular contexts or for dealing with some specific issue or topic or ‘problem’ – but in the context of the process of philosophizing. That is as instruments, procedures, tools or techniques being employed (for specific reason as they have explicit functions) at particular steps or in specific stages of philosophizing as a more general process of almost ‘theorizing, if not full blown theorizing.

http://simsphilosophy.blogspot.co.za/2007/05/reflection-essay-on-philosophical.html

Reflection on Philosophical Methodologies

I think I have applied most of these philosophical methodologies in philosophy classes. First off, the logical analysis is a method we employed in various exercises for my reasoning class. The conceptual analysis is something I am doing quite a bit of right now in my European Contemporary Thought class through examining such terms as “democracy”, “freedom” and “sovereignty”. I also experience this methodology through some of the Save Our Constitution panel discussions. I took a whole course basically just about the method of deconstruction in the Sociology of Knowledge class I took last semester. Phenomenology and one that is not on here but seems quite similar to phenomenology, “introspection”, is something I have been doing on my own since I was seventeen. It is, in many respects, my self-therapy as I struggle to reflect on my life experiences and the meanings or lack thereof that they so entail. Also, in a class I am taking now, Feminist Philosophies, we were just reading an essay by Iris Marion Young titled Menstrual Meditations, where young talks a lot about where young talks a lot about Heidegger’s methodology of exploring oneself by going into and through and reflecting upon one’s moods. The Philosopher as Public Intellectual is a method that I would like to utilize more often, especially once I am out of school. The example I have given through my article about democracy matters I actually got published a few weeks ago in the hill news. In all, I think I have applied most, if not all, of these methods whether in courses or just in my everyday life.

A couple methods that I would like to explore in more depth in my own philosophical activities are the philosophy as conversation method and the two respective comparative methods. I believe these two methods could be synthesized in a way as to facilitate a true dialectic between a diversity of philosophical positions. All too often philosophy is only talking to itself. While the comparative methods might still be subject to this problematic I believe the philosophy as conversation method could really serve as useful tool to bridge the gap between the formally philosophical and everyday experiences. The comparative method is one that I in fact employed in my first philosophy class called Humanities which I had in my senior year in high school. I believe this method is most necessary in terms of its political implications. I say this because the current methods of “Identity Politics” have fragmentized and specialized the Left in comparison to the what I would consider the over-specialization of academia. While particular groups on the left such as women’s liberation, civil rights, socialists, gay rights and environmental organizations fight for their own particular ends, they all too often fail to form coalitions as they instead fight (both internally within organization and externally between different movements) for the same resources and media attention. I firmly believe that the Left needs to bridge this gap if it ever hopes to achieve any of its particular goals in a sustainable way. Thus, if I choose to return to academia my work will most surely focus on making these connections and explicit comparisons between different social movements and between different philosophies.

I think if there is one method here that most reflects my own philosophical work it would be either phenomenology or deconstruction. As I already mentioned I think I’ve been doing phenomenology for some time now, and I believe in the necessity of looking critically and reflectively first and foremost at one’s own experiences. I believe that the deconstruction and phenomenological method are implicit within one another. If there was anything I learned in Sociology of knowledge it is the reciprocity by which our epistemology is created and legitimized by particular subjectivities with particular intentions (usually power). Only by understanding how one’s own sincere intentions figure into this power struggle can one begin to determine how to change the system. One cannot do this by simple abstraction for there is no view from nowhere. The key is to be honest with oneself and one’s intentionality, for it is my contention that only from within the system may the system ever be altered.”

The writer makes statements and do not present any grounds or arguments for them http://www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/WDGroupsubpages/stories/four_approaches_to_philosophy.htm

This article presents us with what the author claims are Four Approaches to Philosophy.

His summary:

Summary:

Few people care to study or understand logic due to everyone believing that they are skilled enough in the art of reasoning. Logicality is one of our most useful qualities. There are four main approaches to philosophy.

1. If you can not prove something is real, then it does not lead to a contrary conclusion, but it is still seen as being harmonious in the aspects of method and conception.

2. There is one thing in which a proposition should and will in most cases confirm. This means that no one can doubt realities because it would not be a source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis is then something that everyone must agree on and admit.

3. Everyone uses the scientific method for many things and only not use it when one does not know how to apply it to the situation.

4. Using or gaining experience of the method does not make us want to use it but helps us settle our opinions. Because of its many splendid triumphs, it has become a permanent part of our lives.

The fourth method is the only one that displays the distinction of right and wrong. By adopting the method of tenacity, you are taking away any doubt in which you might come upon. We adopt whatever belief that we are most accustomed to until we are awakened by the harsh realities which cause us to down spiral into the so called 'real world'. Authority is the method in which mankind will always be ruled. The other methods do have their importance and truths, but this method is the one that will never change.

He then continues to provide us with an ‘analysis” -

Tenacity

The first method Pierce names is tenacity, which is characterized by clinging to a particular belief with complete disregard to all evidence or reason that may imply that it is incorrect. While this is an effective method in that it allows for action and decision without hesitation, it is limited by the fact that other people will inevitably tenaciously cling to different beliefs, casting doubt and disunity. After all, it is hard to believe absolutely in one thing and deny all other reason when you are surrounded by people who hold different beliefs to be just as true.

To resolve this problem, the second method of authority is formed. It ensures that everyone tenaciously holds to the same belief.. people will inevitably see that other authorities practice different doctrines, and will therefore question their own authority.

A third method, a priori, accounts for this. It is the method of choosing whatever opinion or truth is most pleasing at the time. This allows for quick and easy satisfaction to the problem of "who is right?"

All of these methods are flawed, however, for several reasons. They do not distinguish between a right and wrong method. The a priori method, which derives from the first two, will eventually leave doubt in regard to the validity of the opinion ("sure, it feels good, but is it truly correct?"). For these reasons it becomes necessary to develop a method that removes the "human" factor from the equation and leaves only the raw facts. This is the scientific method, which operates off of the belief that regular laws affect the world and are completely independent of our opinions about them. By observing these laws and their interactions with the world, it is possible to come to a valid conclusion.

These methods are interlinked. We always allow our opinions to be determined by something; be it a particular belief, an authority, what strikes us at the moment, or science. Peirce argues that humans need a scientific authority because we are self centered and view the world in a biased way.

...Science itself is influenced by our flawed nature....Thus, Peirce's argument deserves a qualification: with the scientific method, we move constantly towards a greater knowledge and more "valid" opinions based on our ever more accurate (and yet never perfect) perspective of the world. g http://schoubye.org/teaching/Formal-Methods/FormalMethodsNotes2013.pdf

Formal Methods in Philosophy

Lecture Notes — 2013

Dr. Anders J. Schoubye

⋅

School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

University of Edinburgh [email protected]

⋅

See the Contents of this lecture and judge for yourself the assumption underlying this piece. This piece is obviously for those who have one, very selective notion of philosophy and philosophizing. That is fine as only those who share this narrow idea will take notice of and be able to understand the details of this ‘philosophical’ ‘method’. I wish this article could take of theorizing and situate its ideas somewhere in the process of theorizing instead of standing on its own and in isolation.

Contents

Preface i

1 Summary: First Order Logic

1.1

First Order Logic (FOL) ......

1.1.1

Primitive Vocabulary of

......

1.1.2

Syntax of

......

1.1.3

Variable Binding ......

1.1.4

Semantics and Models for

......

1.1.5

Variables in

......

1.1.6

Valuations and Truth-in-a-Model ......

1.1.7

Validity and Logical Consequence ......

2 Set Theory

2.1

ıve Set Theory ......

2.1.1

Notation ......

2.1.2

Basic Axioms of Na

ıve Set Theory ......

2.1.3

Empty Set, Singleton Sets, and Pairs ......

2.1.4

Subsets ......

2.1.5

Intersection and Union ......

2.1.6

Ordered Pairs ......

2.1.7

Cartesian Products ......

2.1.8

Relations ......

2.2

Russell’s Paradox ......

3 Zermelo–Fraenkel Set Theory

3.1

Cumulative Set Theory ......

3.1.1

The Intuitive Picture ......

3.1.2

The Axioms of ZFC ......

3.1.3

Sizes of Infinite Sets ......

3.1.4

Cardinality and One-to-One Correspondence ......

4 Modal Logic

4.1

Modal Logic: Necessity and Possibility ......

4.1.1

Modals in Natural Language ......

4.2

Grammar of Modal Propositional Logic (MPL) ......

4.2.1

Primitive Vocabulary ......

4.2.2

Syntax ......

4.2.3

Semantics ......

4.2.4

The Problem with a Truth Functional Analysis ......

4.3

Modal Systems ......

4.3.1

Validity and Consequence ......

4.4

Establishing Validities ......

4.5

Invalidity and Counter models ......

4.5.1

Graphical Procedure for Demonstrating Invalidity ......

4.6

Axiomatic Proof Theory ......

4.6.1

System K ......

4.6.2

System D ......

4.6.3

System T ......

4.6.4

System B ......

4.6.5

System S4 ......

4.6.6

System S5 ......

4.7

Soundness ......

5 Counterfactuals

5.1

Counterfactuals ......

5.2

The Behavior of Natural Language Counterfactuals ......

5.3

The Lewis-Stalnaker Theory ......

5.4

Stalnaker’s System ......

5.4.1

Primitive Vocabulary of SC ......

5.4.2

Syntax of SC ......

5.4.3

Semantics and Models for SC ......

5.4.4

Semantic Validity Proofs in

......

5.4.5

Semantic Invalidity in

......

5.4.6

Logical Features of

......

5.5

Lewis Criticism of Stalnaker’s System ......

5.5.1

Lewis’ System (LC) ......

5.6

Disjunctive Antecedents: Problems for Stalnaker and Lewis ......

6 Decision Theory

6.1

Decision and Game Theory ......

6.1.1

Some (famous) Decision Problems ......

6.2

Dominance ......

6.3

States, Choices, and Independence ......

6.4

Maximax and Maximin ......

6.5

Ordinal vs. Cardinal Utilities ......

6.6

Do What Is Likely To Work ......

7 Probability Theory

7.1

Probability and Measures ......

7.2

Propositions and Probabilities ......

7.3

Axioms of Probability Theory ......

7.4

Conditional Probability ......

7.5

Conditionalization ......

7.6

Probabilities: Independence ......

7.7

Correlation vs. Causation ......

8 Utility and Probability

8.1

Utilities and Expected Values ......

8.2

Maximise Expected Utility ......

8.3

Properties of the Maximise Expected Utility Rule ......

8.4

A More General Version of Dominance ......

8.5

The Sure Thing Principle and the Allais Paradox ......

8.6

Interpretations of Probability ......

8.6.1

Probabilities as Frequencies ......

8.6.2

Degrees of Beliefs — Bayesianism ......

8.6.3

Evidential Probability ...... 100

8.6.4

Objective Chance ...... 101

9 More on Utility

103

9.1

Declining Marginal Utility ...... 103

9.1.1

Insurance ...... 104

9.2

Utility and Welfare ...... 104

9.2.1

Experience Based Theories of Welfare ...... 105

9.2.2

Objective List Theories of Welfare ...... 105

9.2.3

Preference Theories of Welfare ...... 106

10 Newcomb’s Problem

109

10.1 Solutions to Newcomb’s Problem ...... 109

10.2 Two (potentially) Conflicting Decision Principles ...... 110

10.2.1 Arguments for 2-Boxing ...... 111

10.3 Causal vs. Evidential Decision Theory ...... 115

10.3.1 Arguments for Evidential Decision Theory ...... 116

11 Framing Effects

119

11.1 Risk Aversion ...... 119

11.1.1 Gains vs. Losses ...... 119

11.2 Outcome Framing ...... 121

11.2.1 The Psychophysics of Chances ...... 123

11.2.2 Normative vs. Descriptive Projects ...... 125 h https://onemorebrown.com/2008/08/15/the-philosophical-method/

It seems to me that philosophy is distinguished from other endeavours by the method that it adopts. This is not unusual, as science is usually identified by the scientific method. But what is the philosophical method? This question is obviously controversial but I think a good case can be made that the philosophical method involves a commitment to reason and argument as a source of knowledge.

Well there you have it!

More on this in a later section

The Method of Philosophy Is the Method of Inquiry

Posted on 7 November, 2013

In my earlier post on the method of philosophy I made several negative claims: the method of philosophy is not based on intuitions or reflective equilibrium, it’s not random speculating, and it’s also not just about arguments. Today I’m going to motivate a little maxim that I’ve been mumbling to myself for a few years: that the method of philosophy is the method of inquiry.

Nothing needs to be said about this?

------j

The Method of Philosophy: Making Distinctions. - School of Philosophy philosophy.cua.edu/.../The Method of Philosophy Making Distinction... lies in its method The method of philosophical thinking is not obvious; we think we have ... I wish to help clarify what philosophy is by discussing its method.

As critique of the following article I highlighted certain phrases, while ignoring other parts as merely misleading and/or distracting. This individual should read about theorizing and then apply some of the stages of it to his own confused views on the practice or doing of philosophy and its ‘method’. http://www.csudh.edu/phenom_studies/methods_phil/lect_2.htm

2. Methods in Philosophy

As long as we understand philosophy is "questioning search," and thus (???) "pursuit of knowledge," this search is not the end product of such a search as a bulk of knowledge or information. On the contrary, any pursuit of knowledge, as long as we are finite, mortal human-beings and it searches for knowledge, this pursuit is a rather "endless" process. It is the process starting from "here," from this starting point of the self awareness of one's own ignorance.

§ 2-1-1. Method in General

In general, therefore, the decision to choose a certain way or road or approach is extremely crucial, also needless to say, to the pursuit of knowledge. It may be so due to the lack of knowledge of the so-called "controlled procedure," or it may be the lack of knowledge about the preparations (e.g. including the strong enough approach) or the confusion of the knowledge of the end of such a search. It may very well be that we have a totally wrong "direction" and "anticipation" of such an investigation.

§ 2-1-2. Method and Tool

On the other hand, method may find its way in other activities than in the pursuit of knowledge (of course, of which we are most interested in). Take for example, to work on making something by dealing with what Aristotle called productive knowledge. I would like to cut this pine tree in the garden. In order to do this, I have to have an axe, a hand saw or an electric chain saw. Not only the knowledge of the tools in relation to the object to which the tool is going to be applied here is necessary, but also the knowledge of which direction the tree should fall down in as well as the knowledge of how to axe or saw the tree in order to have it happen. The order of the steps necessary for cutting the tree should be considered ahead before we start cutting it. The similar will be applied to any kind of "productive" activity (including making a clay pot, curving a stone into something, etc.). Thus controlled procedure means those different kinds of knowledge in order to act or achieve some particular goal as well as the order of the knowledge and steps. A biological or a pharmacological experiment perhaps requires more elaborate conditions in which an experiment is going to be conducted. Needless to say, so are doubtlessly with the engineering.

Within the complexity which can be specified those order of steps and knowledge of the tool by means of the linear, mechanical causality, how complicated the procedure might be can be solved by the causal connections step by step.

However, when the procedure to be controlled becomes so complex that the linear, mechanical causation (logical inference on the basis of that causality) can no longer handle it. Take for example, to send a moon we are no longer able to linearly follow the procedure step by step, but rather mutual influences and simultaneous processes are to be "controlled" in order to achieve such a goal with the complex means. In this case, we are now developing a controlling procedure called "simulation." This is certainly one of the first steps to overcome the limits of the linear, mechanical causality. Such a thinking is sometimes called a "system" or a "complex system." (to continue)

2-1-3. The Etymological Search for "Method"

On the one hand, however, the word "me¡odos" or "methodus" in Latin, "method" in English translation, existed in the Classical Greek, which was made as a composite word from two words, the one is "meta"

(meta)‹‹"in pursuit of (something) along side with"‹‹, the other, "¢odos" (hodos)‹‹"the way." What do these words, "meta" and "hodos," mean in the Ancient Greek?

Thus, "methodos" as a composite word from "meta" and "hodos" signified and understood as "in pursuit of (a certain end) along side with the (specified and controlled) way." This concept of "method" in the philosophical significance may be traced back to Hesiod and some Pre-Socratic philosophers via Plato. According to this understanding of the method in philosophy as the Way, the method meant "the Way" ('odos, keleuqos, patos, each one of which means the way, the road, the path, etc.) in the doubled significance 1) as the Way of one's devotion of life to the true and the right and 2) as the Way of the questioning search with such a devotion.

Hesiod distinguished the narrow, sterile way of the virtue (in the sense of "success") from the wider path of wickedness.

Heraclitus was supposed to warn the person who should be mindful when one forgets where the way would lead.

In case of Parmenides, the Way to Truth and Just is shown as the way of the person with the rational understanding that Being is, and is distinguished from the way, which the people of habitual mundaneity and in mortal conceptions follow and are never in touch with Truth. Thus, in the pursuit of Truth lead by Reason shows the Way of Truth with confidence.

In Plato, it appears, this Way ended with the explicit notion of "Method." First of all, in Plato's philosophy, the method signified the inquiry or search, that is, to "scientifically" ask a question or the questioning as such. As we shall see it later in more details, his famous doctrine of method as the dialectic to search the ultimate reality. Then, of course, in distinction from the art of persuasion or sophistic art and skill (h sofistikh teÿnh‹hé sophistiké techné‹) of persuading the other regardless of its truth, the correct way and manner of investigation or of the questioning search for reality.

Among the earlier and later sophists, naturally the method signified the way of winning the discussion or the art of persuasion itself ('h sofistikh teÿnh‹hé sophistiké techné‹) or rhetoric.

According to Hippocrates, the method may find its master example of the art and manner of inquiry in the correct medical diagnosis.

As we shall also discuss later more in detail, Aristotle stipulated the method as the procedure directed to the good with deliberation ('h proairesis‹hé proairesis‹) which is controlled on the basis of insight and can be obtained by study. It is also considered belonging in general to techné ('h tchnh).

The above mentioned characteristics of "method" are to be more precisely articulated and defined in terms of a specific end. Thus, we may generally state the nature of method as follows:

The activity to pursue a certain plan or goal in accordance with the controlled procedure.

This etymological explication of the meaning of "method" may apply to philosophy as questioning search as well as any search for knowledge as a scientific pursuit including mathematics.

Before we shall get into the explication of the historical development of the philosophical method or the methods in philosophy, we would like to discuss Aristotle and his method as logic first. For logic was considered for a long time as the philosophical method even until Immanuel Kant. It is necessary to pay a special attention to logic as the philosophical methods.

§ 2-1-4. Methods in Philosophy and the Objective of Philosophical Inquiry

‹an Overview of the Problem Domains Anticipating our Inquiry‹

According to the preceding etymological investigation of the nature of method, the method is "the activity to pursue a certain plan or goal in accordance with the controlled procedure.

We also understand that philosophy is questioning search, the pursuit of knowledge, for its own sake

Philosophical inquiry is not useful, nor practical, even not meaningful to our living at all. In this sense, the philosopher in the genuine sense is non professional, because of the following two senses: 1) it is because the philosopher and the philosophical knowledge are absolutely no use for our practical, pragmatic life: 2) the philosopher and the philosophical knowledge cannot have any professional training (in order to earn one's living by doing so).

However, this does not mean that the philosophical inquiry has no end or goal, nor even a plan. To be sure that the research and its consequence are neither useful anything else or practical at all.

Neither the knowledge which is to be pursued should be "objective!" It is beyond such a distinction between the objective and the subjective, as Kierkegaard correctly pointed out about the question of our own existence as the reality.

And yet, as long as the method in philosophy is a "activities" to attain a certain knowledge as its objective via certain "procedure," we must be rather explicitly aware not only of the "controlled procedure," but also of the "plan," "objective," or "end." This "objective" or "goal" is, as pointed out before, should be known to us even if it is obscure in terms of our cognition of the thing experience.

As we saw earlier, thus, often lead by the value which such an end or a plan possesses, we are only aware of the general direction.

Due to this beginning of philosophical inquiry, the phenomenological epoché (the bracketing the preconceived ideas, bias, assumptions, presuppositions) neutralizes our dogmatic beliefs, as Husserl said. This may be characterized as a return to Pythagoras' "audience" as the philosophical attitude during the Olympic Games. In this sense, the philosopher is not in the stream, not in the flow of consciousness, but an observer standing outside of such a stream. This unconcerned, uninterested observer's attitude seems to work as long as our endeavouring to see, experience and know reality as it discloses itself as it actually is static in two senses: In the sense a) reality itself is unchanging, static. In the other sense, not reality, but our attitude itself is static in tune with the way in which reality reveals itself as it actually is.

Besides, reality in which we live is no longer static, but in dynamic change and metamorphosis. We are no longer stand outside of reality and remain as the unconcerned, uninterested observer.

In approaching to reality as it reveals itself as it actually is, the philosopher today is no longer an uninterested audience to the static reality, but h/she is expected and does commit himself/herself to the search for reality itself as it reveals itself. Kierkegaard was right, when he said, the objective truth loses its total significance, but the problem is our urgent, subjective truth of our own existence.

§ 2-2. The Methods in the Classic Philosophy in the Far East

I find the following articles confusing and confused https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/page/2/ Philosophy as Logical Anthropology

This is the last part of my wee methodological mini-manifesto. In the first part, I claimed that philosophy isn’t all about argument. https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/philosophy-isnt-all-about-arguments/

In the second part, I argued that the method of philosophy, insofar as there is such a thing, is the method of inquiry. This time I am going to talk about one thing that some philosophers do, and what I do.

One of the most obvious questions one can ask about philosophical methodology is “Well, what is the method of philosophy?” If you’ve got an answer to that question in your pocket, it will help you to judge whether something is a bit of philosophy or not, and whether a bit of philosophy is a good one or a bad one. By comparison, one might suggest at a first pass that the method of science is essentially empirical: you have a question about what the world is like, and then you go check the world with a controlled experiment and find out.

So what can we say about the philosophical method? As in so many things, you can’t go too wrong starting with Plato. Plato has Socrates say somewhere that “Philosophy begins in wonder.” A lot of people seem to like that expression, and it might be true. But—my weird and enduring love for Plato notwithstanding—it doesn’t do much for me. A more articulate suggestion in Plato is that philosophy (sometimes ‘dialectic’) is the ‘examination’ part of the examined life. It is the investigation of your reasons for thinking what you think and for doing what you do, and the policy of offering those reasons up for criticism by others

Part of my dissertation is on what people sometimes call the “metaphysics” of cognition. In that part, I’m trying to figure out what sort of a thing cognition is. Is it stuff, like brains? Or activities, like hearing and deciding? Or is cognition like a program on a computer? And whatever it is, what precisely makes it cognition and not something similar, but that isn’t cognition (like a dead brain, or what a microphone does, or like your web browser)? But I think of my work as a kind of “critical metaphysics” in the Kantian tradition. One of the better-known doctrines in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is what he calls the “Copernican revolution in philosophy.” He claims that metaphysical knowledge, such as it is, is not really about the ultimate structure of reality, but the structure of our own concepts. So metaphysical claims about space and time are not really facts about the world, truly and independently of us, but facts about the basic ways we organize our own experience. I don’t think Kant is totally right about all of that (I’m not an idealist in quite the way he is), but that’s mostly how I think of what I do. My work won’t tell us what cognition really is, but if I’m right I’ll have learned something about how cognitive scientists think about the world, and what we learn from their research (after Sellars: how it is that their bailiwick fits into the countryside of science and understanding).

A nearby suggestion, though, is that philosophy is about evaluating reasons as such.

Professor James Shaw that he sometimes tells his undergraduate classes. I like this story. Shaw says that the method of philosophy is described by something called the “science of argumentation,” which is presumably a generic variation on formal logic. (“Argument” here, as in most philosophical contexts, means a reasoned defense of a claim, not a verbal fight.) On Shaw’s suggestion as I understand it, philosophical training involves acquiring special knowledge of the forms of argumentation, with a focus on which ones are conducive to preserving truth, and expertise in clarifying and evaluating arguments as such. That’s the method.

Concerning the method of philosophy, I’m pretty sure that it’s something like the standard line in analytic philosophy (the tradition in which I’m trained) that the method consists in attention to argument.

Even in analytic philosophy, good work does a lot of things apart from describing argument. For example, good work sometimes describes the range of possible ways of thinking about a topic. As we sometimes say, it maps out the “logical space.”

All other activities belong to philosophy insofar as they help with the activity of articulating good arguments.

Distinctions and other tools for navigating “logical space” without getting lost or overwhelmed are often more widely applicable than a grasp of particular arguments and counterarguments. For example, one set of distinctions familiar to most who have taken introductory philosophy is the standard tree for categorizing views about free will (below).

Another activity of philosophers, and one that is harnessed by the folk picture, is the articulation of possibilities that have not been thought of or put clearly before.

This exploratory side of philosophical activity is easy to miss in the analytic tradition because most papers are organized around arguments, even when they include other kinds of intellectual work.

Some of Wittgenstein’s critics, who see him as a crackpot guru and not a philosopher (“Where are the arguments?”). I would venture that a lot of the power of Wittgenstein’s work comes from his ability to get you to think about things a certain way. Perhaps the same can be said of many of the famous thinkers in the continental tradition. I might say that Plato has a similar effect, even though his dialogues are full of arguments.

So what is the method of philosophy? My opinion is that the method of philosophy just is the method of inquiry.

(Again I have highlighted the main points. Obviously restricting philosophizing to ‘the method’ (???) of inquiry, whatever that is meant to refer to, and arguments are far too simplistic. And, again, I can only suggest that the author informs himself about the process of theorizing; then he will be able to fit in his highly selective notions of philosophy, its aims and methods, as particular features and stages of theorizing, instead presenting them as if they are the entire process.)

Continuing with his statement that https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/the- method-of-philosophy-is-the-method-of-inquiry/ The Method of Philosophy Is the Method of Inquiry

Posted on 7 November, 2013

What do I mean by ‘inquiry’? By ‘inquiry,’ I mean something like the deliberate project of understanding the world (including ourselves) better. Sometimes this is done in order to accomplish a specific goal, like curing polio or building bridges, and sometimes it’s not. I take it that building the Large Hadron Collider and looking for the Higgs boson is an example of the latter kind, although there have been highly practical discoveries along the way and this was always a part of the plan. At its best moments, the academy (I don’t mean the Academy, but academia, the worldwide system of universities and other institutions of higher learning) is an institution dedicated to furthering inquiry and disseminating the resulting understanding to students and others. I am tempted to think of inquiry as a distinctively human project (as far as we know). I don’t think that when a cat figures out how to use door handles it’s performing inquiry, but maybe we can say it’s a special kind of cat-inquiry as long as we recognize the differences between cat-inquiry and human inquiry. For example, the understanding gained from cat-inquiry does not tend to be disseminated among other cats, whereas human inquiry is a deeply social project.

Inquiry is about understanding of some sort, and not just truth or knowledge, narrowly construed.

I believe that the method of philosophy is just the method of inquiry—that the acceptable methods in philosophical work are any and all of the acceptable methods in inquiry in general. To illustrate what I mean, I’ll talk a little bit about philosophy as a scientific discipline, and then about philosophy as a humanistic or perennial discipline.

Philosophy and scientific inquiry. Despite what you may have heard, philosophy and science are pretty tight. This is true in at least two ways. For one, a lot of contemporary analytic philosophy draws on empirical premises to make arguments. Hilary Kornblith is a good avatar for this practice in epistemology. Kornblith uses results in psychology and cognitive science to defend a particular picture of how we come to know things, and what our limitations are. This is also very true in my own specialty, philosophy of cognitive science.

(Cognitive sciences is an exception because it is an inter-disciplinary area of study, with the discipline of philosophy being included…)

Now, I am not claiming here that philosophy is better than scientific disciplines. I am just saying that, at bottom, we are all doing the same kind of thing. Craig Skinner (an interesting fellow) argued online last year that one function of philosophy as a discipline is to be a source for the ‘budding off’ of other disciplines, like the sciences. This is an interesting notion, but the ‘budding off’ activity makes more sense if there is at bottom a continuity between philosophical inquiry and other kinds of inquiry.

The perennial aspect of philosophy.. there is another dimension to some philosophy, which I am tempted to call the “perennial” side to philosophy…. Philosophy in its perennial mode engages with topics that are not suited to being settled once and for all, but that require repeated engagement. I think some ethics is like this…

I also think that this is the sort of picture of philosophy that the later Wittgenstein had in mind when he defended his “therapeutic” conception of philosophy (the most famous remarks are probably §§115–128). Wittgenstein claimed that philosophy clears up the linguistic confusions that we encounter in life. I wouldn’t go so far as Wittgenstein here, but I think it is a part of philosophical inquiry to devise methods for getting around logical space without getting lost, and techniques for finding our way if we have.. (this is all very interesting and I agree with Wittgenstein in this. Much of what was classified under philosophy, for example ontological and metaphysical problems can be dissolved by exploration, or ‘analysis’. But these things, for example clarification of concepts and meaning, form a small part of the process of theorizing and situating them in that larger context will assist philosophers in many ways – getting the bigger picture of what philosophy is like, what it is about and how it is done.)

The perennial vision of philosophy is also championed by Richard Rorty. In a notorious discussion of Derrida’s work (“Philosophy as a Kind of Writing”), he criticizes the analytic philosopher’s “Kantian” conception of inquiry as narrowly knowledge-producing, and suggests instead that philosophers think of themselves as commentators in a great and interminable conversation about how to live. (I quote his words on Rorty, Derrida and Kant as they point out a meaningful aspect of philosophizing and the need to situate it in a lerger process.)

So what is philosophy? All this is to say that philosophy’s methods include those of other areas of inquiry. Sometimes philosophy uses the scientific method. Sometimes science

55 uses philosophical methods. Sometimes philosophy functions to apply old views to new situations. Sometimes in philosophy we reimagine the old and familiar from a new perspective. So (note the, unfounded conclusion the author comes to after all the examples he gives!) if there is any method to philosophy, I think it’s just the method of inquiry in general. Philosophers adopt a broad range of methods for understanding the world, and those methods seem to include, well, all of them.

But I think in the end this is an ecumenical conclusion (I like my conclusions ecumenical). If the project of philosophy is, at its broadest, just the project of inquiry, then that sits well with a lot of other things people have said about philosophy. It sits well with Plato’s old line that “Philosophy begins in wonder,” since the ultimate end of philosophy is to promote understanding. It also plays nice with the other claims of Plato’s Socrates, that philosophy is the means to the examined life, since a better understanding about how to live well is a special case of inquiry, and perhaps the most important one. My conclusion explains the central importance of argument to Plato’s Socrates, but also the importance of critical examination of assumptions and the development of tools for navigating logical space. My conclusion also sits well with Skinner’s suggestion that philosophy is a source for other disciplines to “bud off” from, since other disciplines represent more specialized approaches to inquiry. (Inquiry has now become some kind of measuring tool, and standard..)

Finally, I think my conclusions is a happy companion to Sellars’ famous dictum that “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term.” Sellars continues that philosophy is distinguished from the special disciplines in that philosophers aim to keep track of the big picture (“It is therefore the ‘eye on the whole’ which distinguishes the philosophical enterprise”). I would say that that’s a nice regulative ideal, and it is something I try to do, but I doubt it’s a necessary condition. A lot of philosophers specialize quite narrowly, who are still philosophers. And people of many professions sometimes address philosophical concerns without necessarily reflecting on how their “bailiwick fits into the countryside as a whole.”

If this is right, though, there is a question left outstanding. What does that mean for the subject matter of philosophy? Surely if “leftovers” is too narrow a characterization, then “everything” is too broad! Not everything is philosophy, but I am not sure how to limit the subject matter because anything could be philosophy. Consider that Plato’s prescriptions about policy and social architecture belong to philosophy. Aristotle’s early biology is philosophy (even if it’s not great). Newton was a natural philosopher. Really, it’s one of the most frustrating things about philosophy that potentially anything can be relevant to anything. As a philosopher of cognitive science, I feel like I should know so much more than a human being ever could. I’ve got to manage my time and effort, of course, and it’s hubris to think that one person can be an expert in everything, or even (these days) in very many things at all. But I don’t think I can write off any sphere of human knowledge as clearly irrelevant to philosophy or even to my project. I never really get to say “That’s work for another department,” unless I mean that I just don’t have the skills ( it is not skills that the author requires but just taking notice of the notion of theorizing and explore what the process of theorizing consist of, so that he can situate his selective notion of the activity of philosophizing as inquiry, only, as one stage and one feature of the entire process of theorizing.) or the time or the funding to look into it. But I never meant to claim that it’s my job to know everything (what a wonderful and terrible job that would be!). But any technique

56 that anybody uses to understand the world better is a technique I could potentially find a use for in my line of work.

Other articles by this author – https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/agreeing-and-disagreeing-with-help-from- objectivity https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/why-study-philosophy/

Continuing his article on https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/philosophy-as- logical-anthropology/

This is the last part of my wee methodological mini-manifesto. In the first part, I claimed that philosophy isn’t all about argument. In the second part, I argued that the method of philosophy, insofar as there is such a thing, is the method of inquiry. This time I am going to talk about one thing that some philosophers do, and what I do.

The “metaphysics” of cognition. In that part, I’m trying to figure out what sort of a thing cognition is in doctrines in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is what he calls the “Copernican revolution in philosophy.” He claims that metaphysical knowledge, such as it is, is not really about the ultimate structure of reality, but the structure of our own concepts. So metaphysical claims about space and time are not really facts about the world, truly and independently of us, but facts about the basic ways we organize our own experience. I don’t think Kant is totally right about all of that (I’m not an idealist in quite the way he is), but that’s mostly how I think of what I do. My work won’t tell us what cognition really is, but if I’m right I’ll have learned something about how cognitive scientists think about the world, and what we learn from their research (after Sellars: how it is that their bailiwick fits into the countryside of science and understanding).

Sociologists and anthropologists are interested in describing various human practices and social structures, perhaps especially with an eye toward making comparisons across different communities, or attending to power dynamics and forms of organization and so on. What philosophers (some of them) do is examine human practices with an eye toward their rationality. For example, epistemologists are interested in characterizing and evaluating our evidential practices in general, philosophers of science are interested in scientific practices like explanation and theory-construction, philosophers of action and ethicists are interested in various features of our deliberative practices and practices of evaluating actions and holding people responsible. So like anthropologists, these philosophers are interested in human practices. But unlike most anthropologists, the philosophers are not interested primarily in things like power dynamics or the diversity of cultural practices (though they’re interesting)—philosophers are especially interested in practices that involve reasoning, and whether and why these practices make sense.

(My view here turns out, predictably, to have been anticipated somewhat. For example, the idea of logical anthropology has some affinity with George Graham and Terry Horgan’s notion of “ideological inquiry,” and Katrin Flikschuh’s notion of “philosophical field work.” But my view differs from these others on some details, and was worked out independently

57 with different aims and different cases in mind. Nevertheless, I suspect all three views spring from the same post-Kantian place

“Why bother figuring out what scientists think cognition is? Why not just figure out what it really is?” More generally, one might suppose that it is a better use of time to figure out how things really are, rather than what experts who aren’t trained in philosophy seem to think but don’t tend to say out loud. After all, reconstructing what is implicit in scientific (or other) practices and making it explicit seems to be a roundabout way of figuring out how things really are, and the scientists might not be right, anyway (Would it not be more meaningful to look at the theorizing process/es employed by scientist as well as philosophers? And then situate what you are doing, and then try to understand what scientists are doing – from your perspective?)

The stronger reply is that the scientific enterprise is our best effort to figure out how the world is, and that our everyday practices of learning and inferring and acting reflect the priorities and limitations we actually live with. Doing logical anthropology is a good way to learn about the world while taking advantage of our existing knowledge, and avoiding the philosopher’s temptation to simplify and generalize too much. Logical anthropology isn’t a roundabout route to understanding; it’s a route that takes seriously the fact that we can learn by examining practices that have already emerged to learn about the things we philosophers might want to learn about.

Edouard Machery argues in his book Doing without Concepts (I linked to the précis above) that cognitive scientists investigate at least three different kinds of cognitive structure that are all called “concepts,” that the result is confusion and false disagreement, and that we’d be better off using three different words instead

I think, for philosophers to investigate and describe the practices of those scientists, either in order to explain their practices to others or in order to learn something about the rational organization of scientific institutions, or perhaps for some other reason

While not all philosophers are engaged in kinds of logical anthropology, I think that a lot of us do something like this (although I think few of us think of our work this way). I think it’s a valuable kind of research for philosophers to do—our training makes us suited to it, and not a lot of other researchers do work like this, and it reveals an interesting dimension of human activity that, sometimes, allows us to better understand what we do, and why it does or doesn’t make sense given the world that we live in. At any rate, this I how I think of my own work and its value. And, I suppose, trying to describe logical anthropology as a philosophical project is itself a kind of logical anthropology of philosophy. The main goal I have with Explicit Content is to say clearly what I think philosophers do, in order to explain it to non-philosophers and to induce discussion about whether our practices are good ones. (I still think the author requires a general framework to situate what he is doing philosophically, as if it is philosophy and that frame of reference is that of the process of theorizing.)

In this article the author is doing meta-philosophy.. https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/metadiscursive-technology-distinctions- continua-phase-spaces/

In an earlier post https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/metadicursive-technology- claims-views-arguments/

I discussed the notion of metadiscursive technology: we use concepts to make sense of the world and do things in it, and bits of metadiscursive technology are the concepts that help us understand how we do this. In this post I’d like to talk about three ways of carving up possibilities (three categories of ways to draw categories): distinctions, spectra or continua, and phase spaces.

First, this post is a little meta (getting meta is another important philosophical activity). I’m going to be talking about ways of categorizing possibilities. People usually adopt ways of categorizing things without thinking about which way to use; they just use a way. But I’m going to talking about these ways as objects. can call the different ways models, or schemes, or theories. lots of different models that are useful for different contexts.

First, the distinction is one of the most important tools a philosopher has. A distinction is a contrast between two or more categories in a space of relevant possibilities, or a contrast between two ways of categorizing.

A dichotomy is a special kind of distinction that divides the entire space of relevant possibilities into two non-overlapping categories.

, a continuum only varies along one dimension. That is, a continuum is only the appropriate discursive technology if the relevant possibilities can be placed in order, along a single line. If placing things in a single line doesn’t help you with what you’re doing, you may need to consider more than one dimension of variation. To capture multiple dimensions of variation, you need what I call a phase space by loose analogy with a notion from math and physics

A simple Vijay-fancier model. This is a phase space composed of a continuum and a distinction. The bluer areas indicate regions more likely to contain Vijay’s secret admirer.

For an example of a more complex phase space, we can consider the fact that gender identification does not always agree with biological sex. We could represent that situation by constructing two distinctions in different dimensions, like so:

Sex and gender as a phase space composed of two orthogonal distinctions.

Now recall our simple phase-space model of Vijay’s potential admirers, the Vijay-fancier model. That model relied on the assumption that we could treat gender as a dichotomy. That might be a safe assumption under some circumstances—perhaps all of the people who might have written the notes to Vijay are transgendered or cisgendered. Nevertheless, we could strive to be more inclusive of other trans* people and replace the man/woman dichotomy in the model with a more complex categorization of gender. However, the continuum conception of sexual preference also presupposes a gender dichotomy, so we might also want to revise that dimension of the Vijay-fancier model. A model like that would be a very serious piece of conceptual technology. And as I hope is evident, the activity of

60 categorization need not be restrictive or oppressive. By engaging earnestly with variation and maintaining an open mind about the choice of models for categorization, the activity can be legitimating to those who might normally feel left out. Perhaps particularly with gender, sex, and sexuality, a refusal to think openly about categories often cedes too much ground to traditional (in these cases, also oppressive) models of categorization.

I don’t mean to suggest that phase spaces are always best and distinctions or dichotomies always worse. Different technologies are suited to different tasks.

I trust these examples show that doing things with concepts—even just distinguishing between related categories—can get really complicated really quickly. It often pays to use the simplest model that suits your present purpose

(The reason why I included this philosopher’s discussion on meta-discursive technology, continuums, phase-space etc as they can be useful to create diagrams about the meanings one distinguish during theorizing.) https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/metadicursive-technology-claims-views- arguments/

This is the first post in what will be an ongoing series about what I like to call “philosophical technology” or, sometimes, “metadiscursive” or “metaconceptual technology” (since it’s not relevant only to philosophers). I said last time that the method of philosophy is just the method of inquiry, but in practice a lot of philosophy these days involves a lot of attention to the way we use words or concepts (more on that next time). Since that’s a thing that philosophers do, we need to have some conceptual resources for talking about ways of talking, or for thinking about ways of thinking. I like to refer to these resources as bits of technology to emphasize the fact that developing these resources requires some ingenuity and effort, that using them effectively involves a bit of training, and that they can be developed or improved over time. I like to emphasize that last part because, like a lot of philosophical work, progress in metadiscursive technology tends to become invisible once it’s been made.

Some bits of philosophical technology - distinctions, objections, counterexamples— arguments, soundness and validity for arguments, and necessary and sufficient conditions. modality ( necessity, possibility, and related notions) which comes in various forms—alethic, epistemic, practical, and others the difference between a claim, a view, and an argument.

First, a claim is the sort of thing that is expressed by a declarative sentence. A lot of what philosophers do is examine claims, and eventually commit themselves to affirming some of them, and denying others. (If you both affirm and deny the same claim then you’ve got a contradiction on your hands, consideration of claims is a necessary part of philosophy,

Views are collections of claims that are supposed to be coherent. Views, like claims, can be true or false

Views are often associated with the particular philosophers who explain them, like Ruth Garrett Millikan’s teleosemantics (roughly a view that meanings of words or thoughts, like biological functions, are determined by their causal history according to a process of natural selection teleofunctionalism is a word for a family of related views, like Millikan’s and Karen Neander’s.

The main business of philosophy involves giving and evaluating arguments.

(Argument – connected series of statements; intended to establish a proposition. Evaluate arguments, are the reasons given true and significant to the conclusion? Is the inference valid and is the conclusion plausible?)

An argument is a reasoned defense of a claim. On this view (see what I did there?), arguments consist of two parts: a claim, called the conclusion, that the argument is supposed to support, and a reason that supports the conclusion. Philosophers use arguments to support claims (where the claim is the conclusion) and views (where the various claims that make up the view are conclusions, usually of different arguments). And just like there can be claims about claims, there can be arguments about arguments. For example, criticisms or objections about arguments are arguments about arguments (they are arguments that some other argument is bad)

If arguments are reasoned defenses of claims, then you see that they are not bare statements of claims, and not disputes or questions or problems. Philosophical controversies, like the “mind-body problem” or the “problem of personal identity,” are not arguments in this sense because they do not have conclusions and they do not provide reasons. People make arguments for various views that resolve these controversies in different ways, but philosophers do not usually call the controversies themselves “arguments”

The most common way to model arguments in the analytic tradition is based on the form of a deductive inference in classical logic, or a syllogism in Aristotelian logic. Either way, the reason is made up of claims called premises that, if they are arranged right, support the conclusion through some rule or combination of rules. logic models arguments most philosophical arguments are given in the form of reasons arguments cannot be true or false. Conclusions or premises, since they are also claims, can be true or false, but arguments have more complicated ways of being good or bad. Arguments can be valid or invalid, or cogent or not cogent, or sound or unsound, and so on. an argument is bad if it doesn’t give you a good enough reason to believe its conclusion, and the ways that reasons are bad are different and more complicated than being false.

At least three main ways to criticize arguments in philosophy. First, one can claim that the premises or presuppositions of the argument are untrue. That doesn’t make the argument “untrue,” and it doesn’t mean that the conclusion is false, it’s just one way that an argument might not give you reason to believe its conclusion. A second way to criticize an argument is to say that the reason doesn’t support the conclusion, regardless of whether its presuppositions are true. A simple example:

Edinburgh is in Scotland. Humans often wear clothes. Therefore, George Clooney is famous. The premises and the conclusion are all true, but the premises don’t support the conclusion. They don’t give you reason to believe it. A third way to criticize an argument is to claim that we have an independent reason to believe that the conclusion is false, and that this reason is better than the reason given in the argument. Even if not all philosophy is about arguments, critical examination of arguments is a central activity of philosophers, especially analytic philosophers. And while most disciplines do the same thing a lot of the time, philosophers are often the ones that are most concerned with developing the metadiscursive technology for doing so with self-conscious clarity and precision. sustained attention to arguments, and for the complicated ways of supporting and evaluating claims, arguments, and views. (The above provides a basic description of some elementary, but essential aspects of writing philosophy. Combined with the internal dialogue of the philosophical narrator, where he plays two or more roles, some might be employed as techniques to question or disagree with what he is trying to express, these things are the cement that connects the building blocks of the story being narrated in the entire theorizing process.) L

http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/phil/phil_03.html

The methods employed in philosophical reasonings and enquiries include the basic presuppositions of scientific approach in general; but over and above these methods, philosophical processes endeavour to discover ways of considering and knowing the facts implied in the phenomena of experience.

The true philosophic method should not be lopsided, should not be biased to any particular or special dogma, but comprehend within itself the processes of reflection and speculation and at the same time be able to reconcile the deductive and the inductive methods of reasoning. The philosophy of the Absolute rises above particulars to greater and greater universals, basing itself on facts of observation and experience by the method of induction and gradual generalisation of truths, without missing even a single link in the chain of logic and argumentation, reflection and contemplation, until it reaches the highest generalisation of the Absolute Truth; and then by the deductive method comes down to interpret and explain the facts of experience in the light of the nature of this Truth. This is a great example of the most satisfactory method of philosophical enquiry.

Philosophy being the way of the knowledge of Truth, its method must be in agreement with the nature of Truth. In philosophy and religion the end always determines the nature of the means.

(All these are very beautiful, high ideals, but merely abstract speculation. It covers over all the details that are required in philosophical methodology and theorizing.)

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The following is interesting and perhaps suitable for limited scholarly work and academic investigations and their aims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_method

The scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. It is the methods that systemically advance the teaching, research, and practice of a given scholarly or academic field of study through rigorous inquiry. Scholarship is noted by its significance to its particular profession, and is creative, can be documented, can be replicated or elaborated, and can be and is peer- reviewed through various methods

Originally started to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology, scholasticism is not a philosophy or theology in itself but a tool and method for learning which places emphasis on dialectical reasoning. The primary purpose of scholasticism is to find the answer to a question or to resolve a contradiction. It was once well known for its application in medieval theology, but was eventually applied to classical philosophy and many other fields of study.

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history. The question of the nature, and indeed the possibility, of sound historical method is raised in the philosophy of history, as a question of epistemology. History guidelines commonly used by historians in their work require external criticism, internal criticism, and synthesis.

The empirical method is generally taken to mean the collection of data on which to base a hypothesis or derive a conclusion in science. It is part of the scientific method, but is often mistakenly assumed to be synonymous with other methods. The empirical method is not sharply defined and is often contrasted with the precision of experiments, where data is derived from the systematic manipulation of variables. The experimental method investigates causal relationships among variables. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empirical approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences. An experiment can be used to help solve practical problems and to support or negate theoretical assumptions.

The scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

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I deal with Broad’s positive suggestions for philosophical methods somewhere else, they are, as should be expected, restive and rather ‘analytical’.

SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY

By Professor C. D. Broad.

Published in Aristotelian Society Supplement 21 (1947): 1-32.

Examples of Synopsis

Problem of sense-perception

Mind-body problem

Free-will problem

Paranormal phenomena

Synopsis and Analysis

Synopsis and Synthesis

Some further Remarks on Synopsis and Synthesis

How are Principles of Synthesis Discovered?

How are Proposed Principles of Synthesis Recommended?

O https://www.scribd.com/user/76974855/Buddy-Seed https://www.scribd.com/doc/56238200/Lecture-1-The-Act-of-Philosophizing

(This work appears to be very existentialist as it takes the subject, as a person, as the point of reference. Philosophy/izing then becomes a very personal affair. This dimension is probably present in all philosophizing, but philosophers decide not to concentrate on or deal with it and/or they consider it not to be part of ‘objective’ philosophy/izing?)

On page 6 we are informed about

Philosophizing as the Discipline of Liberation -

especially by ,means of questioning ourselves, our species, our history/ies, our society, community, culture,

socio-cultural practices such as philosophy/izing, etc.

Below we are shown how this questioning operates and how it assists in liberation one from historical, sociological, psychological encapsulation, determination or conditioning.

- philosophizing as a discipline of questioning is a discipline of liberation, i.e. in asking questions, philosophy leads to liberation:

- liberation from encapsulation, conditioning, determination

- liberation to the horizon of possibilities

- liberation to affirm one's possibilities and one's determination i. Questioning liberates one from historical, sociological, psychological encapsulation, determination or conditioning

1. Historical, Sociological and Psychological encapsulation, determination, conditioning

Historical

- what am I know, what can I do, what I am doing, how I value things,

4. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Personhood

- philosophizing becomes an authentic discipline of questioning and of liberation when it is discipline of personhood, i.e.:

- personal task

- at the root of one's being a person

- important in my growth as a person i. Philosophizing as a Personal Task

1. Personal Affair of Asking-Question

- I must myself personally ask the depth-question

- The personal questions and their answers are of great value to me

- The questions have to do with my person, my identity

2. Personal Search for the answer, for the truth to these depth-questions

- I myself will look/find for the answers to these depth-questions

- I could not delegate this to other, nor just be a spectator to the searching-activity

- In my personal search, I must not be content:

- with sheer conjecture,

- with sentimentalism: feeling good and nice

- with philosophical warm blanket

- just with pursuing relevance

- utmost aim: pursuing truth:

- be it palatable or not

- be it a comfort or threat/discomfort

- my personal search for the answer involves: a. exacting, careful, disciplined reflection of my own experience and thoughts b. philosophical dialogue:

- I will be open to other philosophers' experiences and insights

- Study works of others c. study also of other disciplines

- open to other things which might be vehicle for finding answers to my depth-questions about myself: myth, history, literature, natural sciences, behavioral sciences.

3. Seeing the answers to these questions or the truth myself

- in finding some answers to my depth-questions, I myself see, realize

- the truth of these answers

- that they are really true to me

- they really answer my personal depth-questions ii. Philosophizing is at the root of one's being a person

- the human person is driven by his personhood to philosophize:

- to ask depth-questions

- to seek/find answers for them

- to see himself the truth of the answers he has found

- Why? because of the nature of his person as homo viator (man on the way)

- His present situation - the situation he finds himself at the moment:

- not yet complete, not yet finished-product

- not yet sufficient with himself

- contingent

- finite truth, happiness, justice (Pascal)

- yet not content, satisfied with what he is: restless, insatiable

- he is not happy, at rest, content with he is and has at the moment

- he desires, longs from something more than what he is and has at the moment

- Quixotic man: dreaming the impossible

- Alexandrian man: crying because there is no more to conquer

- Augustinian man: ever restless until my heart rests in Thee.

- Pascalian man: great abyss within that cannot be filled by anything finite.

- Dostoyevski's moral hero

- Thus, he asks more questions, he searches, demands for more answers about himself, about his world. iii. In philosophizing, one's personhood, one's growth as a person is at stake

- when I stop philosophizing (to ask depth-questions, to seek/find answers for them and to see himself the truth of the answers he has found),

- I become determined, conditioned, encapsulized by my history, society, and psychological make-up

- I refuse to be open to my own possibilities, and take responsibility of them and myself as creative self-project

- Remain satisfied with the present and stagnate, arresting my growth as a person.

Conclusion/Summary:

- questioning, then, is the starting point and the continuing force of all philosophy

- questioning leads one to find answers, and finding the answers he himself must see the truth of those answers

- but in finding answers to the depth-questions primarily about himself: his identity and action, he will not reach a point of no return; rather leads him back to new questions, leading to a new search, new answers, so on and so forth.

- In so doing, he is liberated from those which enslave, he becomes open how I see things could be determined or conditioned in large extent by the past events, by what happened in the past

- past events: personal, family, society.

- Sociological encapsulation, determination, conditioning

- the kind of society that I live in, the culture, the social structures I find myself in affect in significant degree to the point even of conditioning, determining and encapsulizing my seeing, doing and valuing.

- Psychological encapsulation, determination, conditioning

- refers to how my genes, experiences of pain and pleasure, neurons, among others affect my seeing, doing and valuing.

2. By questioning, I am liberated from these conditioning, encapsulation and determination

- Why? By questioning, I am able to place myself at a distance from these types of conditioning, determination or encapsulation, such that they no longer determine at least in the same degree as before I have begun to question -

By questioning, I could say, "wait a minute", to the present situation: the present conditioning, determination

- In this way, I could resist the conditioning, the currents, the pull; in effect, I revolt against the historical, sociological and psychological conditioning. ii. Questioning opens me to the horizon of possibilities

1. What was seen before as a pure necessity (that which could not be otherwise, in which I have no choice) is now seen upon questioning as a possibility which I could choose to reject or accept.

2. Other possibilities, possible patterns, options which I never have thought before open before me. iii. Questioning leads one to Affirmation

1. Affirmation of the Future as Creative Self-Project

- the possibilities that are opened before him/her in questioning, he must affirm, he must choose, must take responsibility of as his/her project, through which he shapes, determines himself/herself.

- Only in this way, he takes responsibility to determine/shape himself/herself, what kind of self/person he will be in the future (future self-project), rather than being determined by one's history, society and psychological make-up.

2. Affirmation of the Past, of my determinations

- Questioning leads one to confront the past and embrace/accept/own/possess the past as his/her past

- Why is this very important?

- The past is part of one's identity though I do not have to be determined by it

- The possibilities of the present that are opened to me and among which

I must choose to determine my self-project are the results of the past.

- Thus, to embrace the past is also to embrace my present identity and my future self-project.

This exploration of questioning is then from page 7 onwards related to philosophy, or placed in the context of the discourse of philosophy. First as philosophy for all people (as individuals) or in everyday context and then gradually as a disciplined practice.

4. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Personhood

- philosophizing becomes an authentic discipline of questioning and of liberation when it is discipline of personhood, i.e.:

- personal task

- at the root of one's being a person

- important in my growth as a person i. Philosophizing as a Personal Task

1. Personal Affair of Asking-Question

- I must myself personally ask the depth-question

- The personal questions and their answers are of great value to me

- The questions have to do with my person, my identity

2. Personal Search for the answer, for the truth to these depth-questions

- I myself will look/find for the answers to these depth-questions

- I could not delegate this to other, nor just be a spectator to the searching-activity

- In my personal search, I must not be content:

- with sheer conjecture,

- with sentimentalism: feeling good and nice

- with philosophical warm blanket

- just with pursuing relevance

- utmost aim: pursuing truth:

- be it palatable or not

- be it a comfort or threat/discomfort

- my personal search for the answer involves: a. exacting, careful, disciplined reflection of my own experience and thoughts b. philosophical dialogue:

- I will be open to other philosophers' experiences and insights

- Study works of others c. study also of other disciplines

- open to other things which might be vehicle for finding answers to my depth-questions about myself: myth, history, literature, natural sciences, behavioral sciences.

3. Seeing the answers to these questions or the truth myself

- in finding some answers to my depth-questions, I myself see, realize

- the truth of these answers

- that they are really true to me

- they really answer my personal depth-questions ii. Philosophizing is at the root of one's being a person

- the human person is driven by his personhood to philosophize:

- to ask depth-questions

- to seek/find answers for them

- to see himself the truth of the answers he has found

- Why? because of the nature of his person as homo viator (man on the way)

- His present situation - the situation he finds himself at the moment:

- not yet complete, not yet finished-product

- not yet sufficient with himself

- contingent

- finite truth, happiness, justice (Pascal)

- yet not content, satisfied with what he is: restless, insatiable

- he is not happy, at rest, content with he is and has at the moment

- he desires, longs from something more than what he is and has at the moment

- Quixotic man: dreaming the impossible

- Alexandrian man: crying because there is no more to conquer

- Augustinian man: ever restless until my heart rests in Thee.

- Pascalian man: great abyss within that cannot be filled by anything finite.

- Dostoyevski's moral hero

- Thus, he asks more questions, he searches, demands for more answers about himself, about his world. iii. In philosophizing, one's personhood, one's growth as a person is at stake

- when I stop philosophizing (to ask depth-questions, to seek/find answers for them and to see himself the truth of the answers he has found),

- I become determined, conditioned, encapsulized by my history, society, and

70 psychological make-up

- I refuse to be open to my own possibilities, and take responsibility of them and myself as creative self-project

- Remain satisfied with the present and stagnate, arresting my growth as a person.

Conclusion/Summary:

- questioning, then, is the starting point and the continuing force of all philosophy

- questioning leads one to find answers, and finding the answers he himself must see the truth of those answers

- In so doing, he is liberated from those which enslave, he becomes open he becomes open to his own possibilities, and takes responsibility of himself as a creative self-project.

------

We are then presented with William Luijpen’s Authenticity of philosophy.

As we can see this section deals with the following:

The authenticity of philosophy and the contradiction of or rather in(side) philosophy. Misleading or mistaken reactions lead to , what Luijpen’s consider to be, inauthentic philosophy. Symptoms of inauthentic philosophy are:

scient-ism, (as absolute, final, all-encompassing, revealing and dealing with the one and only true reality, perfect methods, etc)

scepticism (rejection of all knowledge, truths, philosophies, etc) is also a philosophy (philosophical approach or attitude);

and dogmatism (of the one, absolute philosophy or the final philosophical system and method, eg Marxism, Critical Theory, Phenomenology, Kantiasm, Analytic philosophy, Deconstructionism, etc).

Luijpen then sets out the characteristics of authentic philosophy from page 9 onwards.

It is- a personal affair of asking questions looking for answers seeing the truth (and meaningfulness?) of some of the answers and philosophy/izing is authentic when -

Philosophizing is authentic when it is one's own life that raises the philosophical questions

- man has to live his own life, determine his own action

- he is responsible for his own life and his actions

- he is only human, a person only when he himself lives his own life and determines his own actions

- others could not live my life for me nor I could simply live the life of others

- I could not let others determine my life and actions, nor determine others' lives

71 and actions

- To live my own life, to determine my own action is to live according to my own basic convictions about:

- Life/Realtiy

- Myself

- Values

- To come to my own basic convictions, I myself have to discover them:

- I myself ask the questions about them

- I myself seek the answers

- I myself have to see the truth of the answers

- Thus, I myself can discover my own basic convictions from within.

------

He then deals with existing philosophies and the relation of my own personal philosophy or authentic philosophical living to them. Page 10

What is the role of constituted philosophies in the philosophizing as a personal task/affair? This we will answer:

- First, by clarifying the nature of these constituted philosophies. This we will do in this section.

- Then, by clarifying the proper relationship between my philosophizing as a personal affair with these constituted philosophies. This we will do in the next section. i. Philosophy as Personal

Philosophy as Personal Expression of Particular Experience of Reality

Here he introduces a new notion , almost a standard of authentic philosophy/izing as a SPEAKING WORD. Not merely a talking word, but a speaking word.

AND not all speaking word is philosophy/ical.

Then describes to us what a philosopher is *

(someone:

- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth

- who experiences reality in a particular way

- who is present to reality in a particular way

- to whom reality is present in a distinct way

- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression of this particular way of experiencing the world/reality.)

He describes the correct philosophical training and his conclusion informs us about the purpose and necessity of studying already constituted (or already existing) philosophy/ies.

Conclusion:

- If constituted philosophy is a speaking word (i.e., an articulation/expression of a particular experience of reality), then the study of the works of the different philosophers leads us to:

- Experience the philosophers' particular experiences of reality

(APPROPRIATION)

- Experience new and deeper aspect of reality other than what they have experienced (EXPANSION)

- And one does not simply accumulate knowledge but listens to reality no matter where it speaks to him.

------

1. Philosophy as Speaking Word, not Talking Words

- talking:

- ideas are just set of ideas

- which we must relate with one another

- which we understand in themselves as ideas/ statements/words

- speaking:

- ideas are expressions of the philosopher's personal experience of reality

- experience:

- subject presence to reality: personal presence of who I am to reality, my opening up to reality

- reality presence to the subject: presence of reality to the person; unfolding, manifestation, unveiling of reality to the person.

- Ideas try to express, articulate what the person sees himself deeply in reality, what he himself experiences, his particular insight of the wealth of reality

2. Not All Speaking Word is Philosophy

- there are different ways of experiencing reality, i.e.

- of being present to reality

- of reality being present to me

- not all of these are philosophy, or philosophical experience. E.g.:

- Rose, a beautiful beach:

- Economist

- Lover

- Theologian

- Scientist

- Philosopher

- School

- Student

- Teacher

- Administrator

- Janitor

- *A philosopher is someone:

- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth

- who experiences reality in a particular way

- who is present to reality in a particular way

- to whom reality is present in a distinct way

- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression of this particular way of experiencing the world/reality.

- E.g.: Plato's Philosophy: Theory of Forms

- As solidified thought it may sound abstract

- But it is really an expression of Plato's particular experience, insight of

3. The Authenticity of Philosophy (William Luijpen) a. Introduction i. The Innumerable Contradictions of Philosophy

- for 2,500 years, man has been philosophizing and the result is innumerable and contradictory claims and systems of philosophy.

- much older than Modern Science, yet unable to formulate even a few theses

(statements) which are unanimously accepted by all philosophers as observed by the philosophers themselves like the Sceptics, Rene Descartes, Hume, Kant

- not a single thesis is not denied by another philosopher in the past, present, or/and future. ii. Reactions Leading to Inauthentic Philosophy

1. Scientism: Rejecting Philosophy and Absolutizing Physical/Empirical Sciences

- Unlike philosophy, Physical/Empirical Sciences:

- Very successful discipline

- Better knowledge of the physical world

- Fruitful knowledge: leads to mastery/control of the physical world

- Greatly contributed in making life better

- Highly Verifiable/Intersubjective Knowledge

- Because of these characteristics of Physical Sciences, some are led to reject philosophy and to absolutize Science (Scientism). How? By claiming/believing that:

1. Science alone is the only genuine and reliable source of knowledge, not philosophy or any other means.

- what can be known and is known by Science constitutes alone as the true knowledge

- knowledge, pure and simple, is the knowledge offered by Science

- here, Science, already claims and decrees, not about the physical world but claims and decrees on Theory of Knowledge: the possibility, extent and validity of knowledge

2. Science alone discloses reality such that whatever cannot be disclosed or are not disclosed by Science is not real.

- here, reality is equated or reduced with the reality accessible to Science

- from its epistemological claim, Science is led to an ontological claim:

A Theory of Reality: The Structure and Constitution of Reality.

- Scientism (absolutizing Science) is not a science, not scientific

- It already claims about things beyond the competence/realm of physical sciences

- It deals with or addresses some things beyond its tasks, namely: Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Reality

- This is already the work of philosophy.

- Thus, in rejecting philosophy, it philosophizes although in a contradictory way, an inauthentic philosophy

- Scientific yet unscientific

- Verifiable yet unverifiable

- Rejects philosophy but already takes a philosophical position on the issues of Knowledge and Reality

2. Scepticism

- rejection of all claims of knowledge of reality, all claims as doubtful, not only philosophical claims, but all claims

- this is itself is a philosophy, a philosophical position/view about knowledge and reality

- yet a self-contradictory philosophy; thus, an inauthentic philosophy

- claim: all knowledge is doubtful

- yet this claim is also a form of knowledge

- therefore, this claim (that all knowledge is doubtful) is also doubtful

- this shows that the conclusion falsifies the first premise; thus the argument contradicts itself.

- Any rejection of philosophy (Scientism, Scepticism and others) is itself a philosophy though a bad one

- To ridicule philosophy, to laugh at philosophy is itself a philosophy

3. Dogmatism

- claims that of the different philosophical systems, one can be the philosophy, is the philosophy

- thus, one looks for THE philosophy:

- in the past: turns to different philosophies or philosophers in the past

- in the present: turns to every new philosophy or system to whether at last it present THE philosophy

- in the future: expects that THE philosophy will be formulated in the future.

- This expectation, of course, meets with disappointments, frustrations, and disillusions. Why?

- Because there was, is and will be never such thing as THE philosophy

2. Authentic Philosophy as a Personal Task i. Philosophizing: not an attempt to learn a philosophical system

- few geniuses in history laid down their thoughts in grandiose masterpieces and systems like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Whitehead

- to philosophize authentically is not simply to learn one of these philosophical systems

- not just to talk about, study/learn with or without proof:

- the questions they asked

- the answers the found and proposed

- and these questions and answers are in the first place not my own personal questions nor could their answers mean anything to me nor make a difference in my life, nor make me more human, more of a person I am meant to be.

- In short, learning their truth, but not my truth. ii. Philosophizing is authentic only when it is a personal affair

1. Personal Affair of Question-Asking

- I myself personally raise the depth questions

- I myself see the importance of these questions and their answers to me

- It is myself that I question

2. Personal Affair of Searching the Answer to these questions

- I myself look diligently for the answers, overcoming any obstacles, subjecting myself to certain disciplines

3. Personal Affair of Seeing the Truth of the answers

- I myself see the truth of the answers I found.

- Only in this way can philosophizing be authentic philosophizing, i.e.:

- Philosophize in an original and personal way

- My own philosophy, not just any other philosophy iii. Philosophizing is authentic when it one's own life that raises the philosophical questions

- man has to live his own life, determine his own action

- he is responsible for his own life and his actions

- he is only human, a person only when he himself lives his own life and determines his own actions

- others could not live my life for me nor I could simply live the life of others

- I could not let others determine my life and actions, nor determine others' lives and actions

- To live my own life, to determine my own action is to live according to my own basic convictions about:

- Life/Reality

- Myself

- Values

- To come to my own basic convictions, I myself have to discover them:

- I myself ask the questions about them

- I myself seek the answers

- I myself have to see the truth of the answers

- Thus, I myself can discover my own basic convictions from within.

3. Authentic Philosophy as a Speaking Word

- though authentic philosophy is a deeply personal affair, there are already concluded philosophies, i.e. thoughts laid down in a system by great genius of the past, like Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas among others.

- What is the role of constituted philosophies in the philosophizing as a personal task/affair? This we will answer:

- First, by clarifying the nature of these constituted philosophies. This we will do in this section.

- Then, by clarifying the proper relationship between my philosophizing as a personal affair with these constituted philosophies. This we will do in the next section. i. Philosophy as Personal Expression of Particular Experience of Reality

1. Philosophy as Speaking Word, not Talking Words

- talking:

- ideas are just set of ideas

- which we must relate with one another

- which we understand in themselves as ideas/ statements/words

- speaking:

- ideas are expressions of the philosopher's personal experience of reality

- experience:

- subject presence to reality: personal presence of who I am to reality, my opening up to reality

- reality presence to the subject: presence of reality to the person; unfolding, manifestation, unveiling of reality to the person.

- Ideas try to express, articulate what the person sees himself deeply in reality, what he himself experiences, his particular insight of the wealth of reality

2. Not All Speaking Word is Philosophy

- there are different ways of experiencing reality, i.e.

- of being present to reality

- of reality being present to me

- not all of these are philosophy, or philosophical experience. E.g.:

- Rose, a beautiful beach:

- Economist

- Lover

- Theologian

- Scientist

- Philosopher

- School

- Student

- Teacher

- Administrator

- Janitor

- A philosopher is someone:

- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth

- who experiences reality in a particular way

- who is present to reality in a particular way

- to whom reality is present in a distinct way

- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression of this particular way of experiencing the world/reality.

- E.g.: Plato's Philosophy: Theory of Forms

- As solidified thought it may sound abstract

- But it is really an expression of Plato's particular experience, insight of reality. ii. End of Philosophical Formation and Training

- not just:

- drilling the aspirant into different philosophical theses or ideas

- memorizing the different philosophical theses and understanding them in themselves

- but the ideas/theses/solidified thoughts are just means:

- to make us personally see/experience what the philosopher has seen, has experienced of reality

- to make us enter into a whole new world we have never seen or even suspected before

- analogy of index finger as a sign

4. Authentic Philosophy as a Common Task i. Authentic Philosophy as both a personal task and a common task

- Philosophizing to be authentic should both:

- A personal task/affair

- A personal affair of asking questions, seeking answers, and seeing the truth of the answers I have found.

- Philosophizing about my person, philosophizing arising from my own personal situation

- A common task

- Demands the study of the works, thoughts of the philosophers

- Why?

- I am inserted in a history of thought, which is not purely personal, which I have not made myself.

- I do not start from zero, from scratch in my own philosophizing for other have thought before me.

- I am carried by their thought; I am in the stream of thought established by tradition

- at least because of the language I speak

- and because of the ideas in this language which permeate me

- Thus, impossible for me to think without tradition

- Problem:

- How do I philosophize in such a way that we do not compromise either:

- The act of philosophizing as a personal task

- The act of philosophizing as a common task

79 ii. Constituted Philosophy makes us sensitive and gives us access to the wealth of reality which they great philosophers have perceived and which otherwise we could not have perceived.

- philosophers have long been dead and their own particular experiences of reality have long passed.

- Yet these experiences found expression, are embodied, contained in their philosophy which is a speaking word.

- Through their works, we have access to their unique experience of reality and through them, their own experiences of reality could also be ours.

- Without their experiences, it would be difficult for us to come to those experiences. E.g.:

- without Plato,

- our experience and conception of reality would be trivial and materialistic

- the totality of being could not be experienced and understood in its great variety and levels, at least when we reflect philosophically upon reality

- without Augustine, we would not have been sensitive and understood the meaning of our restlessness of being-in-the-world.

- Without Marx, Darwin, Freud, we could not have been corrected of our exaggerated spiritualism.

- Therefore, they make it possible for us to have personal experience of reality, to make us sensitive to the superabundance/wealth contained in the totality of all that is. iii. What the great philosophers saw/experienced remains fruitful and source of inspiration

- works of great philosophers are considered classical not only because they make us see/experience what they saw/experience which otherwise we could have been blind of.

- But at the same time they inspire us to see/experience over and beyond what they saw

- They further inspire us to ask questions, further beyond, deeper than they have asked

- To find/seek answers beyond what they found

- To see ourselves the truth of the answers beyond what they themselves saw.

- Yet as every philosopher was struck/awed by a particular aspect of reality, and every system constructed by a great philosopher is an expression/articulation of some aspect of reality, there is a danger:

- that a particular aspect of reality might be elevated by him to the rank of reality, pure and simple, or THE REALITY

- that a particular experience of reality may be proclaimed as the only REALITY

80 and its articulation and systematization as the SYSTEM, THE PHILOSOPHY.

- When this happens, it becomes antiquated.

Conclusion:

- If constituted philosophy is a speaking word (i.e., an articulation/expression of a particular experience of reality), then the study of the works of the different philosophers leads us to:

- Experience the philosophers' particular experiences of reality

(APPROPRIATION)

- Experience new and deeper aspect of reality other than what they have experienced (EXPANSION)

- And one does not simply accumulate knowledge but listens to reality no matter where it speaks to him.

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From page 12 onwards we are informed that philosophy is intersubjective. In other it is not merely subjective, invented and practised by a single, isolated individual but in terms of inter-subjective (socio-cultural) standards, norms or rules of the philosophical discourse and socio-cultural practice.

According to him philosophical truths (insights? knowledge) are intersubjective because -

Philosophical Truth is intersubjective simply because any truth is intersubjective.

- In principle,

- Truth is not true to me alone but to true to all; otherwise is not true at all.

- Though in fact (de facto)

- A particular philosophical truth is not yet recognized by all

- Yet, it can be recognized by all as true, as valid.

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Philosophical truths differ from scientific (also intersubjective) truth - difference is not that scientific truth is intersubjective while philosophical truth is not

- but that the intersubjectivity of scientific truth is easier to achieve than the intersubjective examination of philosophical question and discovery.

- In principle, both are intersubjective.

He then concludes that philosophy is not useful in the world/reality of work, but it is useful and meaningful(?) in the context of the reality/world of philosophy.

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5. The Intersubjectivity of Philosophical Truth i. Denial of Intersubjectivity of Philosophical Truth

- Subjective View of Philosophical Truth: Philosophical Truth has to be

81 subjective in order to be authentic. Why?

- Philosophy is a personal task/affair:

- Asking one's own depth-questions

- Seeking find by himself answers for them

- Seeing himself the truth of the answers

- As a personal task, it involves study of other philosophers in order to see the truth they discovered as true to me, to be inspired to see myself more than what they have seen.

- Subjectivistic View of Philosophical Truth

- Philosophical truth (that which I see, discover, know in my philosophical enterprise, that which is unfolded before me in philosophical pursuit) is true/valid to me alone but not true/valid for all.

- Philosophical Truth is per se not truth for all (not intersubjective)

- Intersubjective View of Scientific Truth

- Scientific truth is the only intersubjective truth, i.e. the only truth which could be accepted/validated by all as true.

- Intersubjectivity as the exclusive characteristic of Science ii. Subjectivistic View of Philosophy is Self-Contradictory View

- those who claim that philosophical truth is true to me alone but not true to all contradict themselves; in other words, their claim contradicts/falsifies their claim

- How?

- For them to claim this subjectivistic view of philosophical truth, they presuppose that this view as true is valid to all and not just to a particular person.

- To claim otherwise, they would not make sense at all as they would not make any statement or any claim on this view. Why?

- For to make a claim of anything before anyone, I presuppose that no one can rightly deny this truth. Thus, this implies that he can also see the truth of what I claim.

- But they claim that no philosophical truth is true to all

- Thus, they contradict themselves. iii. Difference between Philosophical Truth and Scientific Truth

- difference is not that scientific truth is intersubjective while philosophical truth is not

- but that the intersubjectivity of scientific truth is easier to achieve than the intersubjective examination of philosophical question and discovery.

- In principle, both are intersubjective. iv. Philosophical Truth is intersubjective simply because any truth is intersubjective.

- In principle,

- Truth is not true to me alone but to true to all; otherwise is not true at all.

- Though in fact (de facto)

- A particular philosophical truth is not yet recognized by all

- Yet, it can be recognized by all as true, as valid.

6. The Usefulness of Philosophy

1. Philosophy is not useful in the "World of Work"

- "World of Work":

- technocratic world, functional world

- control/manipulation of nature to serve/meet one's particular needs

- dealing with practical living

- life on the horizontal dimension

- Science is very useful in this kind world

- E.g. Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Economic, Psychology

- But philosophy is not useful, and even wholly useless in this kind world, the world of work

- Thus, when a person concerns himself with the practical living and as society tends to become a technocratic organization of work, philosophy is seen as useless

- Ironically, it is to this person, and to this society that philosophy becomes not only useful but even necessary.

2. Philosophy is useful in the "World of Philosophy"

- unless one enters into a particular presence to reality (world) achieved by philosophers, unless one enters into the level, dimension, realm, aspect of reality which the philosophers have entered, one cannot be convinced of the usefulness of philosophy.

- Thus, the usefulness of philosophy can only be appreciated by those who have left behind or go beyond or deeper than the world of work, and have experienced, perceived or entered into this realm, dimension of reality - world of philosophy

- For those who have already entered, they do not need to be convinced of the usefulness of philosophy for the value of philosophy clearly reveals itself.

- For those who have not yet entered into the world of philosophy, they can at least accept the usefulness of philosophy in good faith, and start philosophizing.

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I find many of his ideas very attractive because I have since my youth identified written about then when I found their relevance for philosophy and their meaningfulness, for example intersubjectivity, authentic philosophy/izing and philosophers and those who live for philosophy (and not merely living off it as academic “philosophers”). Original, creative thinking philosophers versus academic, derivative philosophers, comparable to academic art and the art by original-, creative-thinking artists.

However, much of what he suggests are not hard philosophy(ical facts), but the idealization of and hope for what philosophy might be like - almost in the vein of Plato. These are often mere speculations when he makes statements or speculates and do not provide us with arguments and reasons for these statements he makes.

I include this article by C D Broad from 1947 among methods of philosophy as I find it interesting for several reasons.

He was professor of philosophy at a number of universities, mostly in the UK. (Broad was openly homosexual at a time when homosexual acts were illegal. In March 1958, Broad along with fellow philosophers A.J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, writer J.B. Priestley, and 27 others, sent a letter to The Times which urged the acceptance of the Wolfenden Report's recommendation that homosexual acts should 'no longer be a criminal offence'.). He was also President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1935 and 1958. Broad argued that if research showed that psychic events occur, this would challenge philosophical theories of "basic limiting principles" in at least five ways:

1. Backward causation, the future affecting the past, is rejected by many philosophers, but would be shown to occur if, for example, people could predict the future. 2. One common argument against dualism, that is the belief that minds are non-physical, and bodies physical, is that physical and non-physical things cannot interact. However, this would be shown to be possible if people can move physical objects by thought (telekinesis). 3. Similarly, philosophers tend to be skeptical about claims that non-physical 'stuff' could interact with anything. This would also be challenged if minds are shown to be able to communicate with each other, as would be the case if mind-reading is possible. 4. Philosophers generally accept that we can only learn about the world through reason and perception. This belief would be challenged if people were able to psychically perceive events in other places. 5. Physicalist philosophers believe that there cannot be persons without bodies. If ghosts were shown to exist, this view would be challenged. 6. Broad argued for "non-occurrent causation" as "literally determined by the agent or self." The agent could be considered as a substance or continuant, and not by a total cause which contains as factors events in and dispositions of the agent. Thus our efforts would be completely determined, but their causes would not be prior events. 7. New series of events would then originate which he called "continuants." These are essentially causa sui. 8. Peter van Inwagen says that Broad formulated an excellent version of what van Inwagen has called the "Consequence Argument" in defense of incompatibilism.

Broad's early interests were in science and mathematics. Despite being successful in these he came to believe that he would never be a first-rate scientist, and turned to philosophy. Broad's interests were exceptionally wide-ranging. He devoted his philosophical acuity to the mind-body problem, the nature of perception, memory, introspection, and the unconscious, to the nature of space, time and causation. He also wrote extensively on the philosophy of probability and induction, ethics, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion. The ample scope and scale of Broad's work is impressive In addition he nourished an interest in parapsychology—a subject he approached with the disinterested curiosity and scrupulous care that is characteristic of his philosophical work.

Broad did not have “a philosophy”—if by that phrase is meant highly original philosophical theories, and a highly original way of approaching philosophical problems. He writes: “I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower” (1924, p. 77 “Critical and Speculative Philosophy,” in Contemporary British Philosophy (First Series), ed. by J.H. Muirhead, London: Allen and Unwin).

It is one thing to delineate the contours of the notion of emergence, another to argue that emergent phenomena actually exist. A wide variety of phenomena have been held to be emergent. Apart from consciousness, various chemical and biological phenomena have been held to be emergent. Broad is not willing to rule out a physicalistic reduction of chemistry and biology to physics: chemical and biological phenomena might, he believes, very well be reducible to complex microphysical processes. In his opinion, however, consciousness is a different matter. We will turn to consciousness in a moment. When it comes to biology and chemistry he declares that he does not see any “a priori impossibility in a mechanistic biology or

84 chemistry” (1925, p. 72). He stresses that it is in practice enormously difficult to know whether, say, a certain biological feature such as nutrition is emergent or not. It is evident from what Broad says that he recognises that the Emergentist stance has its dangers in that it tends to encourage acceptance of laws and properties as ultimate and irreducible. There is a danger in this because, as he notes, reductive explanations have proved remarkably successful in the past, and there is the possibility that what we take to be an emergent phenomenon is in fact reducible.

In the last chapter of his book Broad presents a taxonomy of no less than seventeen different theories which are “possible theoretically on the relation between Mind and Matter” (1925, p. 607). By a process of elimination Broad arrives at a more wieldy number of theories. Two of the remaining rivalling theories are Physicalism—in Broad's terminology, “Mechanism”—and Emergentism. Let us now take a closer look at his case for Emergentism.

Broad adduces a version of what has come to be known as The Knowledge Argument in favour of an Emergentist position with respect to the place of consciousness in nature. He asks us to assume that there is a mathematical archangel.

Metaphilosophy

Broad distinguishes two chief aspects of philosophical thinking. He labels these critical philosophy and speculative philosophy. Critical philosophy has two chief tasks, one of which is to analyse “certain very general concepts such as number, thing, quality, change, cause, etc.” (1924, p. 82). We make use of these and a whole host of other concepts in science and ordinary life. Although we are typically able to apply them fairly consistently, we are not able to analyse them. Nor are we able to state their precise relations to each other. One task of critical philosophy is to provide analyses of such concepts. It becomes evident that this is an important task as soon as it is realized that when we seek to apply these concepts to odd or exceptional cases we are often uncertain whether they are applicable. For example, it might be unclear whether a certain individual with a multiple personality disorder is a person or not .Such difficulties arise because “we are not clear as to what we mean by ‘being a person’” (1924, p. 83). There is, therefore, a need for an intellectual discipline that seeks to analyse and define this and many other concepts.

In science and in daily life we do not merely use unanalysed concepts. “We also assume uncritically a number of very fundamental propositions. In all our arguments we assume the truth of certain principles of reasoning. Again, we always assume that every change has a cause. And in induction we certainly assume something—it is hard to say what—about the fundamental ‘make-up’ of the existent world” (1924, p. 84).

The second task of critical philosophy is to examine these and other fundamental assumptions; it is “to take these propositions which we uncritically assume in science and daily life and to subject them to criticism” (ibid.).

In order to analyse a proposition we must seek to attain a clearer grasp of the concepts featured in the proposition. Thus the analysis and criticism of a proposition depends on the analysis of concepts. And vice versa: by reflecting on the propositions in which a certain concept occurs we clear up the meaning of it.

Now, critical philosophy is one part or aspect of philosophical thinking. But critical philosophy “does not include all that is understood by philosophy. It is certainly held to be the function of a philosopher to discuss the nature of Reality as a whole, and to consider the position and prospects of men in it” (1924, p. 96). This aspect of philosophical thinking is speculative philosophy.

Speculative philosophy seeks to work out a view of reality as a whole by taking into account the whole range of human experience—scientific, social, ethical, æsthetic, and religious: “Its business is to take over all aspects of

85 human experience, to reflect upon them, and to try to think out a view of Reality as a whole which shall do justice to all of them” (1924, p. 96).

Broad's idea is that the various aspects of human experience and (putative) facts linked to these provide a point of departure for philosophical reflection—an exceedingly important sort of reflection aiming at a reasoned view of Reality as a whole.

As can be gathered from the above, philosophical thinking features, according to Broad, a distinctive type of birds-eye view. He calls it synopsis. Let us take a somewhat closer look at this. The plain man as well as the professional scientist or scholar…

I understand by synopsis the necessary preliminary towards trying to satisfy this desire, viz. the deliberate viewing together of aspects of human experience which are generally viewed apart, and the endeavour to see how they are inter-related. (1947a, p. 4)

On reflection it is clear that the synoptic stance is necessary for the discovery of various inadequacies in our picture of reality, inadequacies resulting from a far too insular perspective on reality. The synoptic stance will, in effect, lead to the discovery of latent philosophical problems: “It is synopsis, revealing prima facie incoherence, which is the main motive to philosophical activity” (1958, p. 121; cf. 1947a, p. 16). And it is clearly only after we have discovered and successfully addressed these problems that we may lay claim to a satisfactory picture of reality as a whole.

Broad gives several examples of how synopsis is featured in philosophical thinking. One of these is taken from the free will problem. The main facts germane to the problem are these: (i) When we consider a situation in which we did a certain action, we are quite convinced that we could have done otherwise: we could have performed an alternative action. On reflection it seems clear that ‘could’ is used in some sense that is not analysable in terms of ‘would have, if’. (ii) Our moral judgments seem to presuppose that a person who in fact willed to do a certain action could have willed otherwise. (iii) Given the past, the actual situation and the laws of nature it seems impossible that anything other should have happened than what in fact did happen. If so, how can our volitions be other than completely determined? (iv) It is difficult, then, to reconcile the notions of moral responsibility with the view that our volitions are completely determined.

The problem of free will is discovered when we look at (i) and (ii) in the light of (iii) In other words, the very problem is discerned only because we have envisaged these facts together, i.e. because we have taken a synoptic view of the facts.

Above are a few of the reasons why I find Broad, his work, ideas and suggestions of interest. It is against the above background as context that the article below should be res.

I find Broad’s notions and depictions of method of (analytic and) speculative philosophy both very general, but also in another sense very limited. Those are obviously not the only reasons for philosophy or the only methods employed by philosophers. In spite of this I find his view of methods of philosophy of interest.

SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY

By Professor C. D. Broad.

Published in Aristotelian Society Supplement 21 (1947): 1-32.

Examples of Synopsis

-it might be said, there is no single non-disjunctive characteristic, and no conjunction of such characteristics, common and peculiar to what Hume was doing and what Hegel was doing. To philosophize, on this view, is to perform one or another or a mixture of at least two fundamentally different kinds of activity, one of which is exemplified by Hume's attempt to analyze causal propositions and the other by Hegel's attempt to establish the formal structure of the universe by dialectical reasoning.

I think it is quite clear that the word "philosophy" has always been used to cover the kind of thing that Hegel did and that McTaggart did in addition to the kind of thing which Hume did and which Moore does, whether or not these be two radically disparate kinds of activity. Anyone who proposes that the name "philosophy" shall be confined to the latter kind of activity is proposing that it shall henceforth be used in a new and much narrower sense, and he should be expected to give reasons for this linguistic innovation. He might, e.g., give as his reason that philosophizing, in the sense of doing the kind of thing that Hume did, is a practicable and useful activity; whilst philosophizing, in the sense of doing the kind of thing which Hegel did, is not only impracticable and therefore useless, but is also a deceptive activity, based on certain fundamental illusions which have now been detected and explained but are still dangerously insidious.

This brings me to my main point. I am inclined to think that there are two features which are together characteristic of all work that would generally be regarded as philosophical, and a third which is often present in a high degree but may be evanescent. The two which I think are always present may be called "analysis" and "synopsis"; the one which may be present in a vanishingly small degree can be called "synthesis." Analysis and synopsis themselves may be present in very different degrees and proportions. Hume's work, e.g., is so predominantly analytic that it might be denied to be synoptic, and Hegel's is so predominantly synoptic that it might be denied to be analytic. But I believe that both are always present, and that each involves some degree of the other. Lastly, there is a very high positive correlation between synopsis and synthesis. Synthesis presupposes synopsis, and extensive synopsis is generally made by persons whose main interest is in synthesis.

. Let it suffice to say crudely that it (analysis) consists in clearing up the meanings of all the fundamental kinds of sentence which we habitually use, e.g., causal sentences, material-thing sentences, sentences with the word "I" as grammatical subject, sentences with temporal copulas, ethical sentences, religious sentences, and so on.

Synopsis and synthesis are especially characteristic of what may be called "speculative philosophy," and that is why the latter phrase occurs in the title of my paper. I will begin with the notion of synopsis.

Examples of Synopsis.

(1) As our first example we will take the problem of sense-perception. Why is there a problem?

(i) In the first place, because, if we attend carefully, we note such facts as these.

Two observers, who are said to be seeing the same part of the same thing at the same time, are often not being presented with precisely similar visual appearances of that object.

One and the same observer, who is said to be seeing the same unchanged part of the same thing at different times and from different positions, is often not presented with precisely similar visual appearances of that object on both occasions.

(ii) Secondly, because there are visual experiences which are abnormal in various ways and degrees, but are similar to and continuous with those which are normal. They range, e.g., from mirror-images and straight sticks that look bent when half immersed in water,

(iii) Thirdly, because of facts which are still quite unknown except to a minority of grown-up educated persons, and which must have been completely hidden from everyone at the time when the language in which we express our sense-experiences was first formed and for thousands of years afterwards. One of these is the physical fact that light takes time to travel; and that the visual appearance which a remote object presents at any time to an observer depends, not on the shape, size, position, etc., of the object at that moment, but on what they were at the moment when the light now striking the observer's eye left the object. Another of them is the physiological fact that visual appearances vary with certain changes in the observers eye, optic nerve, and brain

There is a problem of sense-perception, in the philosophical sense, for those and only those who try to envisage all these fact together and to interpret sense-perception and its implications in relation to all of them. Since it is plain that they are all relevant to it, it is desirable that someone should take this synoptic view. Since the language in which we express our visual sense-perceptions was formed unwittingly in prehistoric times to deal in a practical way with a kind of normalized extract from our visual experiences, and in complete ignorance of a whole department of relevant physical, physiological, and psychological facts, it would be a miracle if it were theoretically adequate and if it were not positively misleading in some of its implications.

(i) It is plain to common sense that many of a person's sensations and feelings follow immediately upon and vary concomitantly with certain events in his eyes, ears, joints, etc. On the other hand, many experiences, e.g., processes of day-dreaming, deliberating, reasoning, etc., do not seem prima facie to be covariant with events in the body.

(ii) The sciences of physiology and anatomy make it almost certain that the immediate bodily antecedents and correlates of sensations and feelings are not events in one's eyes, ears, joints, etc., but are slightly later imperceptible chemical or electrical changes in certain parts of one's brain.

(iii) It is further alleged, on the authority of these sciences, that there are immediate bodily antecedents and correlates of the same general nature, viz., chemical or electrical events in certain parts of the brain, even to those mental processes, such as deliberating, comparing, abstracting, reasoning, etc., which do not seem prima facie to be covariant with bodily events.

(iv) The physical sciences have developed a concept of causation in terms of regular sequence and concomitant variation, in which the notions of agent and instrument, activity and passivity, etc., play little if any explicit part.

Now these various mutually relevant facts are hardly ever viewed synoptically except by philosophers. Common sense is quite ignorant of many of them and common language had grown up and crystallized ages before they were known or suspected. On the other hand, scientists who are familiar with all of them tend to concentrate on one at a time and temporarily to ignore the rest. When they confine their attention to the physical and physiological and anatomical facts they are inclined to take the view that men are "conscious automata," i.e., that all our mental states, including processes of reasoning, willing, etc., are mere by-products of states of brain which are determined by purely physical and physiological antecedents. But their daily lives and all their professional activities presuppose a view which is shared by plain men and which seems prima facie to be incompatible with the conscious automaton theory.

Scientists all assume in practice that when they design and carry out an experiment, they are initiating certain changes in the material world which would never have taken place unless they had been thought out beforehand, desired, and deliberately led up to. They assume that their assent to or dissent from the various alternative interpretations which might be put on the results of an experiment is determined by processes of reasoning, demonstrative or probable, in which belief is given or withheld in accordance with evidence, which may be favourable or unfavourable, weak or strong or coercive. Now all this involves concepts, and seems prima facie to involve modes of causation, completely different from those in terms of which the conscious automaton theory is formulated.

To sum this up briefly. The scientist who investigates and theorizes about man and his powers and activities is himself a man exercizing certain characteristically human powers and activities. But the account which he is apt to give of man, when he treats him as an object of scientific investigation, seems prima facie difficult to reconcile with the occurrence and the validity of his own most characteristic activities as investigator, experimenter, theorist, and reasoner. The need for synopsis by someone who is aware of all the main facts and can hold them steadily together in one view is here particularly obvious.

(3) As a third example of synopsis I will take what may roughly be called the "free-will" problem. The main facts are these.

Here again the need for synopsis is evident. It seems prima facie that each of us conducts one part of his life on the assumption of complete determinism and another part on the assumption of incomplete determinism plus something else more positive which it is very hard to formulate clearly. And these two parts are not sharply separated; they overlap and interpenetrate each other. Most of us generally manage to ignore one aspect at a time and concentrate on the other; but, however convenient this may be in practice,

Problem of sense-perception

Mind-body problem

Free-will problem

Paranormal phenomena

Synopsis and Analysis

I think that there is a very close connexion between synopsis and the process of analysis which everyone admits to be a characteristically philosophical activity. It is generally synopsis which gives the stimulus to analysis. As I have shown in my examples, it often happens that each of several regions of fact, which we generally contemplate or react to separately, gives rise to its own set of concepts and principles; that each such set seems satisfactory and internally coherent; but that, when we contemplate these various departments together, we find that the corresponding sets of concepts and principles seem to conflict with each other. The intellectual discomfort thus produced in a person of philosophical disposition is perhaps the most usual motive for trying to analyze those concepts and to formulate those principles clearly. Such a process is an indispensable step towards deciding whether the inconsistency is real or only apparent and towards formulating it precisely if it is real; and this is a precondition of any efficient attempt to resolve it.

Synopsis and Synthesis

Synopsis is not an end in itself. It not only provides the stimulus for analysis, but it also furnishes the basis for something else, which may be called "Synthesis." The purpose of synthesis is to supply a set of concepts and principles which shall cover satisfactorily all the various regions of fact which are being viewed synoptically.

The apparent conflict between the concepts and principles characteristic of different regions of fact must be shown to arise from the valid application of these common concepts and principles in different contexts and under different special limitations.

Some further Remarks on Synopsis and Synthesis

Intellectual activities which are genuinely philosophical, in that they involve deep analysis, wide synopsis, and illuminating synthesis, occur from time to time within some special science. This is particularly obvious when the science is concerned, as physics is, with very fundamental and pervasive features of reality. I could certainly count as philosophical the work done by Galileo on the analysis of kinematic and dynamical phenomena, and the correlated work of synthesis in which the formulation of the three laws of motion and the law of gravitation by Newton is an outstanding phase and the unification of these laws by Lagrange, Hamilton, and finally Einstein is a further development.

Again, the situations which led respectively to the formulation of the Principle of Relativity and the Uncertainty Principle are typical of what I have exemplified under the head of synopsis, and the principles themselves are typical of what I have described as synthesis. In the case of relativity there were many different kinds of possible experiments which, in accordance with well-tried and generally accepted principles, might have been expected to provide perceptible evidence for the motion of a body relative to the surrounding ether. The results of all these experiments were completely negative

The Principle of Relativity and the Uncertainty Principle are clear instances of synthesis, based on synopsis, and preceded and made possible by a more profound analysis of generally accepted concepts and principles.

The results of such synthesis in physics have the advantage that either they themselves can be stated mathematically or that they impose certain conditions on the form of equations which express possible physical laws. Hence their consequences can be rigidly deduced. This is seldom, if ever, true of syntheses which cover several widely different fields of fact, e.g., man considered as reasoner, experimenter, and morally responsible agent, and man considered as an object of physiological and psychological experiment

In the Second Book of his Ethics Spinoza tries to formulate a theory of bodies consistent with his general principle that there are no finite continuants, that the only genuine continuant is God, and that God is a substance which is at once material and mental

Synopsis and synthesis both take place at various levels. I have just given examples of them within a single region of fact, viz., that of physics. At a higher level one would try to get a synoptic view, e.g., of the phenomena of organic and inorganic material things and processes, and try to synthesize them into a single coherent scheme. At a still higher level one would take into one's view the facts of mental life at the animal level, and then at the level of rational cognition, deliberate action, specifically moral emotion and motivation, and so on. Finally, if no account had so far been taken of paranormal phenomena, these would have to be brought into the picture, and an attempt made to synthesize them with the normal facts. As each new department was considered it would be necessary to review the syntheses which had seemed fairly satisfactory at the previous level. Some of them might not need to be rejected or even seriously modified, but others might have to be completely abandoned or considerably altered when a new department of facts was brought into the picture.

How are Principles of Synthesis Discovered?

I am sure that it is impossible to give rules for the discovery of principles of synthesis in philosophy just as it is impossible to give rules for suggesting fruitful hypotheses and colligating a mass of observations in science

Now the speculative philosopher naturally wants to unify and synthesize such a hierarchy, and he is often tempted to do it in one or other of two opposite ways. These might be called respectively Reduction and Sublimation. The reductive type of unification tries to show that the features which are characteristic of the higher levels are analyzable without remainder into those which belong to the lower levels. Just the same laws hold throughout, but we have different and more special collocations of the same elements at the higher levels; and the occurrence of those special collocations is itself explicable from the laws and collocations characteristic of the lowest level. The sublimative type of unification tries to show that the features which seem to be peculiar to the higher levels are really present in a latent or a specially simplified or a degenerate form at the lower levels. It may even try to show that features which seem to be typical of the lowest levels are partially misleading appearances of features which are typical of the highest levels. Materialism, in its non-emergent forms, and Leibniz's form of mentalism, are extreme cases respectively of the reductive and the sublimative types of unification.

How are Proposed Principles of Synthesis Recommended?

How does a philosopher persuade himself and try to persuade others to accept the kind of synthesis which he proposes?

In former times the method was often, ostensibly at any rate, deductive. Certain very general premises were accepted by a philosopher as self-evident synthetic propositions. He either assumed that other persons would find them self-evident at once, or, if not, he tried to

89 remove confusions and misunderstandings and to place his readers in a position in which they could contemplate these premises for themselves. He hoped and expected that they too would find them self-evident.

In recent times speculative philosophers have more and more tended to abandon this method.

Certain very general premises were accepted by a philosopher as self-evident synthetic propositions. He either assumed that other persons would find them self-evident at once, or, if not, he tried to remove confusions and misunderstandings and to place his readers in a position in which they could contemplate these premises for themselves. He hoped and expected that they too would find them self- evident.

I offer as a conclusion to the different notions expressed concerning the method/s and the methodology of philosophy the following suggestions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_methodology

I make comments in this statement of philosophy and its methods/methodologies.

Philosophical method (or philosophical methodology) is the (intersubjective, socio-cultural practice , discipline or discourse employing and based on agreements or norms accepted by and institutionalized in the particular schools of or moments in philosophy of the philosophical discourse, if not accepted by the entire discourse, that is all the schools and movements that constitute it) study of how to do philosophy. A common view among philosophers is that philosophy is distinguished by the ways that philosophers follow in addressing philosophical questions. There is not just one method (I suggest that this article means that there exist different techniques at different stages of doing philosophy, or at different stages of theorizing, instead of different, available, mutually exclusive methods or approaches for a particular stage or context) that philosophers use to answer philosophical questions.

Systematic philosophy is a generic term that applies to philosophical methods and approaches that attempt to provide a framework in reason (This is not one exclusive method of philosophy but one aspect, one stage of philosophical investigation or theorizing) that can explain all questions and problems related to human life.(is it not ALL life or rather existence? Ontology and metaphysics) Examples of systematic philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel. (But what are the methods they used to do this? To build such systems? Systematic philosophy is not one method but a label a classificatory term of their type of work or their intentions) In many ways, any attempts to formulate a philosophical method that provides the ultimate constituents of reality, a metaphysics, can be considered systematic philosophy. (Again this is used a a label a classificatory term) In modern philosophy the reaction to systematic philosophy began with Kierkegaard and continued in various forms through analytic philosophy, existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstructionism.

Some common features of the methods (NOT methods, techniques or tools in the larger philosophical process of theorizing or philosophical methodology) that philosophers follow (and discuss when discussing philosophical method) include:

 Methodic doubt - a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs. (and all underlying assumptions and implicit pre-suppositions or transcendentals as in the case of Kant).  Argument - provide an argument or several arguments supporting the solution.(by means of coherent, logical reasoning and sound arguments0  Dialectic - present the solution and arguments for criticism by other philosophers, and help them judge their own.

Doubt and the sense of wonder

Plato said that "philosophy begins in wonder", a view which is echoed by Aristotle: "It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them." Philosophizing may begin with some

90 simple doubts about accepted beliefs. The initial impulse to philosophize may arise from suspicion, for example that we do not fully understand, and have not fully justified, even our most basic beliefs about the world. (doubt as a way, a method to question and problematize things)

Formulate questions and problems (problem statements!)

Another element of philosophical method is to formulate questions to be answered or problems to be solved. The working assumption is that the more clearly the question or problem (the process of problematization) is stated, the easier it is to identify critical issues. (It is called problem statements, creating alternative problem statements.)

A relatively small number of major philosophers prefer not to be quick, but to spend more time trying to get extremely clear on what the problem is all about. (Paying a great deal of attention to alternative problem statements so as to select the most accurate and detailed one.)

Enunciate a solution

Another approach is to(1) enunciate a theory , or (2) to offer a definition or analysis, which constitutes an attempt to solve a philosophical problem. (This is a method and approach? Where does this THEORY come from? Philosophers invent them by speculation? Surely a lot of prior work would have to be executed to fabricate such a THEORY?) Sometimes a philosophical theory by itself can be stated quite briefly.(?? really) All the supporting philosophical text is offered by way of hedging, (Broad illustrates how this works in detail, attempts to provide solutions from particular cases, generalize mistakenly to all cases, false hypotheses and proposals) explanation, and argument. (see Broad who from his scientific background, has a number of things to say about developing and using theories in science and reductionism, sublimation and deductionism in philosophy. How are Principles of Synthesis Discovered? gives details of how philosophers do this. “remarks on the general procedure of speculative philosophers….What often happens is this. A philosopher is strongly impressed by some feature which is highly characteristic of a certain important region of fact, and which within that region is felt to be completely intelligible and a source of satisfactory explanations…..Finally, he tries to show that this principle is, in fact, operative in those regions in which it seemed at first sight not to be so. In this way, he feels that he has discovered order and unity pervading the collection of various regions of fact which he is surveying synoptically.” “Now the speculative philosopher naturally wants to unify and synthesize such a hierarchy, and he is often tempted to do it in one or other of two opposite ways. These might be called respectively Reduction and Sublimation. The reductive type of unification tries to show that the features which are characteristic of the higher levels are analyzable without remainder into those which belong to the lower levels. Just the same laws hold throughout, but we have different and more special collocations of the same elements at the higher levels; and the occurrence of those special collocations is itself explicable from the laws and collocations characteristic of the lowest level. The sublimative type of unification tries to show that the features which seem to be peculiar to the higher levels are really present in a latent or a specially simplified or a degenerate form at the lower levels. It may even try to show that features which seem to be typical of the lowest levels are partially misleading appearances of features which are typical of the highest levels.”)

Not all proposed solutions to philosophical problems consist of definitions or generalizations. (such as? Examples please) Sometimes what is called for is a certain sort of explanation — not a causal explanation, but an explanation for example of how two different views, which seem to be contrary to one another, can be held at the same time, consistently. One can call this a philosophical explanation. (See the above comments and ‘philosophical explanation’ of how this is done by Broad. Broad himself uses this technique in the whole of his article). (These are truly baffling comments, especially as they are presented as truthful generalizations)

Justify the solution

A argument is a set of statements, one of which (the conclusion), it is said or implied, follows from the others (the premises). One might think of arguments as bundles of reasons — often not just a list, but logically interconnected statements — followed by the claim they are reasons for. The reasons are the premises, the claim they support is the conclusion; together they make an argument. (See Formal methods in Philosophy by Schoubye for details on the formal aspects of arguments and reasoning, very detailed and complex). (also see Thouless: Straight and Crooked thinking for correct arguments and different fallacies. Available as free PDF download here: http://neglectedbooks.com/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking.pdf Straight and Crooked

Thinking, first published in 1930 and revised in 1953, is a book by Robert H. Thouless which describes, assesses and critically analyses flaws in reasoning and argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking Synopsis of Thirty-eight fallacies discussed in the book. (Brtoad selects a few of these that according to him are frequently , illegally not validly, employed by philosophers. He uses his own terms to refer to them). Among them are:

 No. 3. proof by example, biased sample, cherry picking  No. 6. ignoratio elenchi: "red herring"  No. 9. false compromise/middle ground  No. 12. argument in a circle  No. 13. begging the question  No. 17. equivocation  No. 18. false dilemma: black and white thinking  No. 19. continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard)  No. 21. ad nauseam: "argumentum ad nauseam" or "argument from repetition" or "argumentum ad infinitum"  No. 25. style over substance fallacy  No. 28. appeal to authority  No. 31. thought-terminating cliché  No. 36. special pleading  No. 37. appeal to consequences  No. 38. appeal to motive

Thinking portal

 List of cognitive biases  List of common misconceptions  List of fallacies  List of memory biases  List of topics related to public relations and propaganda )

Philosophical arguments and justifications are another important part of philosophical method. It is rare to find a philosopher, particularly in the Western philosophical tradition, who lacks many arguments. Philosophers are, or at least are expected to be, very good at giving arguments. They constantly demand and offer arguments for different claims they make. ( To make and argument is to provide a bundle of reasons that are logically interconnected or coherent so as to be able to arrive at and make a or draw a certain conclusion. The statements are followed by a claim for something to be the case or not. The argument/s support the claim, the conclusion that is arrived at or made). (As we shall see in the quotes below a good argument is clear, well organized and a sound statement of a number of interconnected or coherent reasons for why one is able and it is legitimate to say something or to make a certain claim or draw a certain conclusion.)

This therefore indicates that philosophy is a quest for arguments.(Really? Arguments have very specific functions in philosophical writing, investigation, description and communication. Another unfounded generalization) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument n philosophy and logic, an argument is a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion.[1][2] The general form of an argument in a natural language is that of premises (typically in the form of propositions, statements or sentences) in support of a claim: the conclusion.[3][4][5] The structure of some arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and formally defined "arguments" can be made independently of natural language arguments, as in math, logic, and computer science.

In a typical deductive argument, the premises guarantee the truth of the conclusion, while in an inductive argument, they are thought to provide reasons supporting the conclusion's probable truth.[6] The standards for evaluating non-deductive arguments may rest on different or additional criteria than truth, for example, the

92 persuasiveness of so-called "indispensability claims" in transcendental arguments,[7] the quality of hypotheses in retroduction, or even the disclosure of new possibilities for thinking and acting.[8]

The standards and criteria used in evaluating arguments and their forms of reasoning are studied in logic.[9] Ways of formulating arguments effectively are studied in rhetoric (see also: argumentation theory). An argument in a formal language shows the logical form of the symbolically represented or natural language arguments obtained by its interpretations.)

Argument at PhilPapers

Argument at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project

"Argument". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.http://www.iep.utm.edu/argument/ The focus of this article is on understanding an argument as a collection of truth-bearers (that is, the things that bear truth and falsity, or are true and false) some of which are offered as reasons for one of them, the conclusion. This article takes propositions rather than sentences or statements or utterances to be the primary truth bearers. The reasons offered within the argument are called “premises”, and the proposition that the premises are offered for is called the “conclusion”.

The Structural Approach to Characterizing Arguments

1. The Pragmatic Approach to Characterizing Arguments 2. Deductive, Inductive, and Conductive Arguments 3. Conclusion 4. References and Further Reading

A good argument — a clear, organized, and sound statement of reasons — may ultimately cure the original doubts that motivated us to take up philosophy. If one is willing to be satisfied without any good supporting reasons, then a Western philosophical approach may not be what one actually requires. https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2008-9/10100-spring/_LECTURES/2%20-%20arguments.pdf http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/goodarg.php Argument analysis

 A01. What is an argument?  A02. The standard format  A03. Validity  A04. Soundness  A05. Valid patterns  A06. Validity and relevance  A07. Hidden Assumptions  A08. Inductive Reasoning  A09. Good Arguments  A10. Argument mapping  A11. Analogical Arguments  A12. More valid patterns  A13. Arguing with other people https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/logical-and-critical-thinking/0/steps/9153

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/logical-and-critical-thinking/0/steps/9152

So far we have talked about the kind of support that can be given for conclusions: deductive and non-deductive. But we haven’t said anything yet about whether the premises are true or not. This is what we do when we evaluate whether arguments are sound or cogent.

Validity and strength of arguments do not on their own tell us whether arguments are good or bad. We’ve actually seen rubbish arguments that were valid. That’s why we need to introduce two further concepts for arguments: being sound and being cogent.

Sound Arguments

 Definition: A sound argument is a valid argument that has true premises.

Firstly, a sound argument is a deductive argument. It’s trying to establish conclusive support for its conclusion. Secondly, the argument is valid: the premises, if true, would guarantee that the conclusion is also true. And on top of all that, the premises are actually true. Therefore, a sound argument guarantees that its conclusion is true.

We say that a sound argument is a good argument. It is a good argument because it guarantees that the conclusion is true. It would be irrational for you not to believe the conclusion of a sound argument.

Of course, sound arguments are very rare, because they’re very hard to establish. But, some arguments are sound.

For example:

The province of Québec is part of Canada. Patrick was born in Québec. Therefore, Patrick was born in Canada.

This is a valid argument. Can you see why?

Furthermore, the premises are true: Québec is indeed part of Canada, and Patrick was indeed born in Québec. Hence, you can be absolutely certain that Patrick was born in Canada, and you ought to believe that Patrick was born in Canada. There’s no way around it.

Here are some more examples of sound arguments:

I drank coffee this morning; therefore, I drank something this morning.

Patrick got married on January 4, 2014. Patrick has not been divorced, and Patrick is not a widower. Therefore, Patrick is not a bachelor.

It is true that Patrick got married on January 4, 2014, that he has not divorced and that he is not a widower. So Patrick is not a bachelor because a bachelor is an unmarried male, by definition.

Cogent Arguments

Now, what about non-deductive arguments? For non-deductive arguments, we introduce the notion of a cogent argument.

 Definition: A cogent argument is a strong non-deductive argument that has true premises.

And again, we say that cogent arguments are good. A cogent argument is by definition non-deductive, which means that the premises are intended to establish probable (but not conclusive) support for the conclusion.

Furthermore, a cogent argument is strong, so the premises, if they were true, would succeed in providing probable support for the conclusion. And finally, the premises are actually true. So the conclusion indeed receives probable support.

Here’s an example:

Patrick was born in North America and Patrick wasn’t born in Mexico. It’s thus quite probable that Patrick was born in the USA.

That is a cogent argument. If all you know about Patrick is what’s contained in the premises, and those premises are true (they are!), then that’s a fairly strong argument, because the population of the USA is over 300 000 000, whereas that of Canada is under 40 000 000. This means that the odds that Patrick was born in the USA are roughly 88%, which makes the support for the conclusion quite strong. Furthermore, the premises are true. Therefore, the argument is cogent, and so it is a good argument.

This means that we can have good arguments that have false conclusions!

Here’s another example:

I had coffee this morning. Therefore, it’s quite likely that I drank something this morning.

This is a strong argument with true premises, so it is cogent and therefore, good. But the conclusion is not guaranteed. It may be that I had coffee this morning by eating it, or by some other means. But of course, this is very unlikely, so the argument is strong, though it’s still possible that the conclusion is false. Still, this is cogent and therefore, a good argument.

Philosophical criticism (by and among colleagues and other philosophers that form part of the intersubjective discourse of philosophy or a particular school of or movement in it, usually from a specialized field).

In philosophy, which concerns the most fundamental aspects of the universe, the experts all disagree.( (First of all they dis/agree about what philosophy is and is not, what it must be and what it may be; then they disagree

95 with those from other schools and movements of philosophy and finally with those from the same school or movement as their own. All this occurs on agreed intersubjective, institutionalized and internalized socio- cultural norms, practices, rules and standards that constitute the current or contemporary philosophical discourse in general and their own school or moment in particular. ) It follows that another element of philosophical method, common (socio-culturally institutionalize in their particular school or movement of philosophy and internalized and adhered to be individuals constituting that school, movement or approach) in the work of nearly all philosophers, is philosophical criticism. It is this that makes much philosophizing a(n institutionalized) social (a socio-cultural practice and intersubjective discourse) endeavour.

Philosophers offer definitions and explanations in (to try and obtain a) solution to problems (or to attempt and dissolve those problems) ; they argue for those solutions; and then other philosophers provide counter arguments, expecting to eventually come up with better solutions. This exchange and resulting revision of views is called dialectic. Dialectic (in one sense of this history-laden word) is simply philosophical conversation amongst people who do not always agree with each other about everything.

One can do this sort of harsh criticism on one's own, but others can help greatly, if important assumptions are shared with the person offering the criticisms. Others are able to think of criticisms from another perspective.

Some philosophers and ordinary people dive right in and start trying to solve the problem. They immediately start giving arguments, pro and con, on different sides of the issue. Doing philosophy is different from this. It is about questioning assumptions, digging for deeper understanding. Doing philosophy is about the journey, the process, as much as it is about the destination, the conclusion. Its method differs from other disciplines, in which the experts can agree about most of the fundamentals.

Motivation

Method in philosophy is in some sense rooted in motivation (it is a passion for a need of certain individuals, the wonder and astonishment of Plato and Aristotle), only by understanding why people take up philosophy can one properly understand what philosophy is. (The article of Buddy Seed deals at length with details of the – why do philosophy, the reasons, the passion for it, the authentic philosopher, the authentic and inauthentic philosophical life and philosophy and ways of doing philosophy and reasons for doing philosophy).

People often find themselves believing things that they do not understand. For example, about God, themselves, the natural world, human society, morality and human productions. Often, people fail to understand what it is they believe (and how this what of their believes are determined by implicit underlying transcendentals such assumptions and pre-suppositions. These assumptions concern many things, for example the philosopher’s acceptance of the principles of a certain school or movement, certain methods and norms concerning other aspects of philosophical practice that frequently remains implicit and that people are unaware of) and fail to understand the reasons they believe in what they do. Some people have questions about the meaning of their beliefs and questions about the justification (or rationality) of their beliefs. A lack of these things shows a lack of understanding, and some dislike not having this understanding.

These questions about are only the tip of the philosophical iceberg. There are many other things about this universe about which people are also fundamentally ignorant. Philosophers are in the business of investigating all sorts of those areas of ignorance.

A bewilderingly huge number of basic concepts are poorly understood. For example:

 What does it mean to say that one thing causes another?  What is rationality? What are space and time?  What is beauty, and if it is in the eye of the beholder, then what is it that is being said to be in the eye of the beholder?

One might also consider some of the many questions about justification. Human lives are deeply informed with many basic assumptions. Different assumptions, would lead to different ways of living.

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Theories to consider if you wish to be involved in metaphysics, ontology and epistemology –

 The notion of inflation. Definition: A sound argument is a valid argument that has true premises.

David Marsh, of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge University, is not giving up on inflation yet. “The predictions of inflation developed by Stephen Hawking and others more than 30 years ago have been tested by cosmological observations and faced those tests remarkably well. Many scientists regard inflation as a simple and elegant explanation of the origin of galaxies in the universe,” he said.

Or,

Scientists could soon find out whether light really did outpace gravity in the early universe. The theory predicts a clear pattern in the density variations of the early universe, a feature measured by what is called the “spectral index”. Writing in the journal Physical Review, the scientists predict a very precise spectral index of 0.96478, which is close to the latest, though somewhat rough, measurement of 0.968.

Science can never prove the theory right. But Afshordi said that if measurements over the next five years shifted the spectral index away from their prediction, it would rule out their own theory. “If we are right then inflation is wrong. But the problem with inflation is that you can always fine tune it to fit anything you want,” he said.

And

Magueijo and Afshordi’s theory does away with inflation and replaces it with a variable speed of light. According to their calculations, the heat of universe in its first moments was so intense that light and other particles moved at infinite speed. Under these conditions, light reached the most distant pockets of the universe and made it look as uniform as we see it today. “In our theory, if you go back to the early universe, there’s a temperature when everything becomes faster. The speed of light goes to infinity and propagates much faster than gravity,” Afshordi said. “It’s a phase transition in the same way that water turns into steam.”

Magueijo and Afshordi came up with their theory to explain why the cosmos looks much the same over vast distances. To be so uniform, light rays must have reached every corner of the cosmos, otherwise some regions would be cooler and more dense than others. But even moving at 1bn km/h (The speed of light in a vacuum is considered to be one of the fundamental constants of nature. Thanks to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, it was stamped in the annals of physics more than a century ago at about 1bn km/h. But while general relativity is one of the cornerstones of modern physics, scientists know that the rules of today did not hold at the birth of the universe.), light was not travelling fast enough to spread so far and even out the universe’s temperature differences.

The multiverse (other universes or alternative universes) -

The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of possible universes, including the universe in which we live. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and the physical laws and constants that describe them.

The various universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes" or "alternative universes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Astronomy

97 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Cosmology

In this section we will look at the process of theorizing or what theorizing is not according to Weick’s comments on Sutton and Staw (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00018392%28199509%2940%3A3%3C371%3AWTIN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F) What theory is not, theorizing is Weick, Karl E Administrative Science Quarterly; Sep 1995; 40, 3; ABI/INFORM Global. As well as the article by DiMaggio in Administrative Science Quarterly Vol 40 no 3 Sept 1995 pages 391-397.Comments on “What theory is Not.” Weick; http://www.jstor.org/stable/258556 Theory Construction as disciplined imagination. The importance of this article by DiMaggio is because he suggests other kinds of theory. That of course will change the whole picture as presented by Weick and “Theory or not,” as suggested by Sutton and Staw. Cornelissen, J.P. (2006) Making sense of theory construction: Metaphor and disciplined imagination. Organization Studies, 27 (11). pp. 1579-1597 can be mentioned for the reasons that he improves, according to him, Weick’s work by adding the use of the optimality principles and that he explicitly states that Weick deals with (imagining apt and meaningful metaphors in artificial selection or evolutionary epistemology) Metaphor (‘organizational improvisation as jazz’ and ‘organizational behavior as collective mind’ which Weick himself has imagined, selected and advanced in his writings) He suggests that these metaphors fulfil and adhere to optimality principles (*the ‘integration principle’; topology principle, web principle, unpacking principle, good reason principle, metonymic tightening principle, distance principle, concreteness principle,) and stress the importance of it in Weick’s work when he discusses creative imagination and theory or theorizing. These metaphors have created new images and theoretical representations of organizations. Cornelissen suggests that adhering to the principles will extend and improve Weick’s take on theorizing as disciplined imagination. Both metaphors are good examples of how metaphors lead to emergent meaning (and cannot therefore be reduced to the meanings of its component parts), and as such have enriched the conceptualization (and subsequent understanding) of ‘organizational improvisation’ and ‘organizational behavior’ and have generated novel inferences and conjectures, these metaphors were also found to be ‘apt’ and fitting to the target subjects that they are meant to illuminate, We (Cornelissen) argue that this is primarily the result of these two metaphors adhering to a set of specific principles known as the ‘optimality principles’; a set of constraints under which metaphorical blends are most effective. As a whole, the eight ‘optimality principles’ are the following*, with the first six the original ones proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (1998, 2002; see also Coulson 2001; Coulson and Oakley 2000): the integration, topology, web, unpacking, good reason, metonymic tightening, distance and concreteness principles. These principles are derived from standard pressures that obtain in all mapping situations including metaphorical mappings (see Hofstadter 1995, for a review). The ‘organizational improvisation as jazz’ metaphor satisfies most of these principles including the integration, topology, web, unpacking, good reason, metonymic tightening and concreteness principles. The ‘organizational behavior as collective mind’ equally satisfies a multitude of principles including the integration, topology, web, unpacking, good reason, metonymic tightening and distance principles. Cornelissen discusses them in detail on pages 17- 24.

Kayla Booth sums up Weick - Theorizing by Weick Regarding "What Theory is Not, Theorizing IS" by Kayla Booth says this –

Kayla Booth "What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is" Karl E. Weick Argument Based on Process:

Theory as an end product vs. theory as a process.

Theory in the making! Conclusion The Gist Argument Theorizing Response to Sutton and Staw "Benefit of the Doubt Piece":

This is not theory because 1) The author is lazy 2) The author is not there... yet Argument Is Theory itself a Continuum or is the Process of Creating Theory a Continuum?

"What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is" or "What Theory is Not, Theorizing Can Be"

In “What theory is not, theorizing is” Weick states that he wishes to deal with the process of theorizing rather than the product. He agrees with Sutton and Staw that : Theory is not something one "adds" to data, or something that one transforms from weaker to stronger by means of graphics or references, or can be feigned by flashy conceptual performance.” He suggests that references, lists, diagrams, data and hypotheses might not be theories but can refer to theoretical development in the early stages. He then decides to look at the theorizing process with the reminder that most theories are approximate theories and not strong theories and Merton says they take four forms: * general orientations * analysis of concepts * post-fact interpretation from a single observation * empirical generalization While they are not full theories, they can serve as means to further development.

Like Sutton and Shaw say, it is hard in this low-paradigm field to spot which efforts are theory and which are not. Theory can take a variety of forms and is a continuum . One can also go directly from data to prescription without a theory, as doctors go from symptoms to treatment without a diagnosis sometimes. Data, lists, diagrams are not theory but can help point to and elaborate theories. We have the definition of theory as a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. It belongs to a family of words that include hypothesis, thesis, conjecture, supposition, speculation, postulation, postulate, proposition, premise, surmise, assumption, presupposition; opinion, view, belief, contention . p.389 The process of theorizing consists of activities like abstracting, generalizing, relating, selecting, explaining, synthesizing, and idealizing. These ongoing activities intermittently spin out reference lists, data, lists of variables, diagrams, and lists of hypotheses. Those emergent products summarize progress, give direction, and serve as place makers. They have vestiges of theory but are not themselves theories. Then again, few things are full- fledged theories. . The ongoing activities often create the lists, diagrams, etc. that eventually can become real theory. "Those emergent products summarize progress, give direction, and serve as place makers. I suspect that tight coupling between treatments and symptoms, with belated theorizing of the outcomes, is a fairly common tactic in theory construction. In my own ASQ paper re-analyzing the Mann Gulch disaster (Weick, 1993), the argument developed partially by taking the Mann Gulch data as symptoms and, through a series of thought trials corresponding to treatments, seeing which concepts made a difference in those symptoms. This exercise in disciplined imagination resulted eventually in the theory that sense making collapses when role structures collapse Weick develops his own ideas further in many articles and books, for example in “Theory construction as disciplined imagination.”

DiMaggio says that the problem is even more important than as stated by Sutton and Staw as there are three additional issues. 1 There is more than one kind of theory. Theory as covering laws Some traditional theories are simply statements of the world as we see it. (This sounds like some traditional speculative metaphysical systems.) Here researchers often scurry about looking for high r-squares and explanations.

Theory as enlightenment

A device of sudden enlightenment. This kind of theory is complex, de-familiarizing, and rich in paradox. It's a "surprise machine".

Theory as narrative An account of a social process with tests of the plausibility of the narrative. Sutton and Shaw have a version of this in mind when they talk about theory. Yet explanation means accounting for variance.

2. Good Theory Splits the Difference Many of the best theories are hybrids of the above approaches. One problem is that these approaches are driven by different values and purposes.

Clarity vs De-familiarization One must balance the act of helping readers see the world with new words/eyes without confusing them too much.

Focus vs Multidimensionality One person's multidimensionality is another person’s goulash. One person’s focus is another’s reductionism.

Comprehensiveness vs Memorability Sometimes our search for novelty causes us to overlook the most important variables (though uninteresting).

Theory Construction is Social Construction, often after the fact.

Resonance "The reception of a theory is shaped by the extent to which a theory resonates with the cultural presuppositions of the time and of the scientific audience that consumes it". The environment in which evolutionary arguments are released changes. Cultural change modifies the metaphors that we think with.

Theories into Slogans People often simplify the things they read until they fit into pre-existing schemas. If a paper is widely read by others not expert in the original field it gets further refined and simplified. New ideas get lumped into either "hard" or "soft" intuitive notions.

Post hoc theory construction Theories are socially constructed after they are written. It’s a cooperative venture between writer and readers. We often reduce theories to slogans.

I really wished to return to Weick and his “Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination.” I already included details about Cornelissen’s article on this work by Weick in which he suggested the use of the eight optimality principles. Some descriptions (‘metaphors’) of Weick adhere more to these principles while others fail to adhere to all of them. However I wish to concentrate on a few points made by Weick himself. p.516 Theorists often write trivial theories because their process of theory construction is hemmed in by methodological structures that favor validation rather than usefulness (Lindblom, 1987, p. 512)..

The process of theory construction in organizational studies is portrayed as imagination disciplined by evolutionary processes analogous to artificial selection. p.516 Theorizing consists of disciplined imagination that unfolds in a manner analogous to artificial selection. (variation, selection, retention). In other words the theorist will make variations on many things, eg concepts used, stating the problem, on the variables, conjectures, hypotheses, generalizations etc for example by virtual or imaginary experiments. They will make selections and retain only certain things. p.519 When theorists build theory, they design, conduct, and interpret imaginary experiments. In doing so, their activities resemble the three processes of evolution: variation, selection, and retention. p.519 These evolutionary processes are guided by representations of the environment, not by the environment itself. The radar emissions are a substitute for actually moving through the environment.

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p.520-521 The theoretical problem that trial and error thinking tries to solve is equivalent to the adaptation problem that trial and error locomotion tries to solve... the likelihood of a solution is determined in part by the way the environment is represented or perceived... solutions... are more likely to be discovered where the representations are fuller. Whether the problem is to find an explanation or a competitive advantage, fuller descriptions suggest a greater number of possibilities. p.522 In general, a theorizing process characterized by a greater number of diverse conjectures produces better theory than a process characterized by a smaller number of homogeneous conjectures. The key property is heterogeneity among thought trials. The advantage of blind-variation, after which thought trials are modeled, is that the process can be "smarter" than the people who run it. p.522 Blind alleys will be searched longer and more deeply when classification is weak or ignored than when it is strong and heeded. p.524 Given the laboratory for rejecting hypotheses, science will develop most rapidly when the widest range of guesses is being tried [Campbell, 1961, p. 21] Execute imaginary experiments with concepts, problem statements, metaphors, representations, the optimality principles, generalizations, hypotheses, etc p.524 In an earlier example... it was argued that a reaction such as "that's interesting" was sufficient to selectively retain a conjecture, independent of efforts to verify it. Eventual attempts at verification may occur sometime later but, for reasons discussed... the value of a theory does not ride on the outcome of those tests. The reason it does not is that validation is not the key task of social science. It might be if we could do it, but we can't - and neither can economists p.524 If valid knowledge is difficult, if not impossible to attain in social science, then this puts theorizing and selection in a different light. Theorizing is no longer just a preliminary to the real work of verification, but instead it may involve a major portion of whatever verification is possible within the social sciences. p.524 The generic selection criterion that seems to operate most often in theorizing and that substitutes for validation [JLJ - Weick is referring here to the social sciences] is the judgment, "that's plausible." p.525 Whenever one reacts with the feeling that's interesting, that reaction is a clue that current experience has been tested against past experience, and the past understanding has been found inadequate. p.525 A disconfirmed assumption is an opportunity for a theorist to learn something new, to discover something unexpected, to generate renewed interest in an old question (make assumptions explicit and identify them and their implications) p.526 A disconfirmed assumption interrupts a layman's well-organized activities and plans, but it accelerates the completion of the theorist's well-organized activities and plans. Those differential effects suggest that each should experience quite different emotional reactions to the experience of disconfirmed assumptions... theorists should like disconfirmed assumptions because they accelerate the completion of their intention to build interesting theory.

Theorists are both the source of variation and selection in choosing the form of the problem statement and select their thought trials to solve the problem. p.517 By theory we mean "an ordered set of assertions about a generic behavior or structure assumed to hold throughout a significantly broad range of specific instances" (Sutherland, 1975, p. 9). To understand a model, the terms theory, validation, and quality of theory are defined. Theory building involves simultaneous parallel processing, not sequential thinking.

The greater the number of diverse criteria applied to a conjecture, the higher the probability that those conjectures will result a good theory. Selection criteria (develop and apply them during the entire process of theorizing) must be applied consistently. To retain the theory, the theory statement should be obvious, connected, believable, beautiful, and real. p.517 The lesson to be learned is that any process must be designed to highlight relationships, connections, and interdependencies in the phenomenon of interest.

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p.518 Campbell (1974, p. 415) argued that the process of knowledge building is an evolutionary sequence that involves trials in the form of conjectures and errors in the form of refutations. Thus, as Popper (1966) said, imagination becomes a "benign environment that permits our hypotheses to die in our stead." Learning is viewed as a cumulative achievement, and theorizing is viewed as "selective propagation of those few social constructions that refer more competently to their presumed ontological referents" (Campbell, 1986, p. 118). Selection of these more competent social constructions is done either by the external environment or by mental selectors that represent that external environment and select on its behalf (Campbell, 1974, p.430). p.519 Most existing descriptions of the theorizing process assume that validation is the ultimate test of a theory and that theorizing itself is more credible the more closely it simulates external validation at every step... These concerns can be counterproductive to theory generation. p.519 researchers should view theory construction as sense making (e.g. Astley, 1985). Durbin (1976) pointed the way to this usage when he remarked that "a theory tries to make sense out of the observable world by ordering the relationships among elements that constitute the theorist's focus of attention in the real world" (p. 26). This article emphasizes that thought trials, representations, and mental selection should be taken into a consideration in the theory construction. A combination of experience, practice, convention to select among conjectures, and imagined (simulated) reality should be used in the process of theory building. This compromise presents some similar discussions as other articles in the theory building domain. Weick (1989) states the importance of imagination in the process of theory construction. He believes that imagination in theorizing results from diversity of problem statements and trial and error thinking . Such idea is close to Daft (1983) in the article “Learning the Craft of Organizational Research” that suggests an innovative organization research method that differs from traditional research that primarily put an attention on quantitative or qualitative research methods. Moreover, theory for Weick (1989) is not simply a category of fact.This thought is similar to Bacharach(1989) in the article “Organizational Theories: Some Criteria for Evaluation,” which represents that a theory is different from categorization of data, typologies, and metaphors. http://johnljerz.com/superduper/tlxdownloadsiteWEBSITEII/id87.html

I mention a few points that I found of importance in Weick’s article. Problem, problem statements in my view can change as one develops a ‘theory’. Additional problems can be added and problems can be stated in greater detail with new perspective that arrive during the development of the ‘theory’. As Weick suggest accuracy and great detail is essential in stating the problems to be dealt with by a theory.I think that apart from the problem/s to be investigated problems concerning the development or evolvement of the theory might also occur and they should be distinguished from the problems in the problem statements. To deal with the problems data would have to be collected, even though such a brain dump or phenomenological vision of problems might not be accurate. Theorizing is not one-dimensional but multi-dimensional and one must remain open to the fact simultaneously, parallel processing is required and not simplistic linear thinking. Many cognitive skills will be required to function at the same time for example sense making, ordering, selection, creative thinking, adding new concepts, being aware of the implications of the concepts and terms use, etc. One should also remain aware of the main functional and unnecessary internal and external limits and constraints, such as boundaries, are operating at every step of the process of theorizing. One can take as example conjectures or suggestions to be dealt with. One will be involved all the time in imaginary experiments and solutions, designing them, conducting and interpreting them. Weick highlights this by his three evolutionary (epistemological) notions or processes of variation, selection and retention.

The quality of theory produced is predicted to vary as a function of the accuracy and details present in the problem statement that triggers theory building, the number of and independence among the conjectures that attempt to solve the problem, and the number and diversity of selection criteria used to test the conjectures

An essential ingredient in Weick’s ‘disciplined imagination’ involves his assertion that thought trials and theoretical representations typically involve a transfer from one epistemic sphere to another through the creative use of metaphor.

The article follows up on this point and draws out how metaphor works, how processes of metaphorical imagination partake in theory construction, and how insightful metaphors and the theoretical representations that result from them can be selected.

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The paper also includes a discussion of metaphors-in-use (organizational improvisation as jazz and organizational behaviour as collective mind) which Weick proposed in his own writings

The whole purpose of this exercise is to theoretically augment and ground the concept of ‘disciplined imagination’, and in particular to refine the nature of thought trials and selection within it.

In doing so, he also aims to provide pointers for the use of metaphorical imagination in the process of theory construction.

It is argued that interest is a substitute for validation during theory construction, middle range theories are a necessity if the process is to be kept manageable, and representations such as metaphors are inevitable, given the complexity of the subject matter. p.526 Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt and, once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative reactions since they have alternate paths to realize their plans... Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession, while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts. p.528 The view that theory construction involves imagination disciplined by the processes of artificial selection has a variety of implications and raises a number of questions. p.529 The assessment that's interesting has figured prominently throughout, because it has been viewed as a substitute for vaildity... The reaction that's interesting essentially signifies that an assumption has been falsified. p.529 The choice is not whether to do mental testing. Instead, the choice is how well this less than ideal procedure can be used to improve the quality of theoretical thinking.

Weick sees the theorist as the creator, executioner and maintainer of epistemological evolution. He must deal with the problem statements he creates in a certain manner. He should introduce and consider as many relevant aspects and details of the problems as possible. His statements should be accurate and detailed and making explicit all assumptions. This will be done against the background or in the context of the three processes of evolution that his theorizing will resemble. He will design, conduct and interpret his theorizing as if it is executing artificial selection that consists of imaginary experiments. The three principles underlying this selection are closed related and consists of the three activities of variation, selection and retention. Something like the survival of the fittest (the most relevant, functional, meaningful and necessary) in natural evolution. Variations of problem solving of and conjectures of the problem statements will be made and judgements by means of what is interesting, plausible, consistent and appropriate must be executed. Selection criteria by means of conjectures (about what should be retained and what must be rejected) during thought trials (employing mental experiments or simulations) will alter the conjectures, delete some, modify others and include new ones. Imagination for example employs a technique of metaphors as cognitive/heuristic devices. Simulated images are employed for theoretical representation as aids to learning, exploration, discovery and problems solving. According to Cornelissen, good examples of such metaphors are: trap door of depression, a word painting or picture, boiling mad, clean slates. These metaphors fulfil the criteria, he sets out, for the best metaphors to be used in this context.

The problem statements will present the imagined thought trials with problems to be solved, investigated, explained, dis/confirmed and identifying meaningful domain words and sets of assumptions concerning these things. Smaller or middle range theories will deal with solutions that have limited and explicit assumptions, accuracy of the problem specification in detail. The thought trials will employ metaphorical variation (as analysed by Cornelissen in detail and with his suggestions to improve this technique) so as to create a number of them with a great diversity. They will present conjectures as ways to dis/solve the problem. For this diverse, heterogeneous conjectures are required. Thought trials should be eclectic with periphery cases that are often under-explore. This is where the function of selection criteria comes in. They enable the manipulation of the selection process to retain that what is plausible. Validation is not the key task of social sciences so selection criteria of conjectures to be created replace validation. The theorist must control the choice of the conjectures. The value of social science do not lie in validated knowledge but in the suggestion (propositions) of relationships and connections that change our perspective on an issue. Weick’s suggests theory construction as a process that involves imagination (by the use of metaphors and imaginary experiences) and that is disciplined by selection criteria (leading to the development of conjectures,

103 variation, selection, aptness, judgements of plausibility, dis/confirmed assumptions). Cornelissen re-states terms used by Weick by the application of the eight principles, for example that’s concrete is the topology principle (preserve a relations structure, for example organizational as collective mind) that’s obvious is the integration principle (concepts or domains that are unrelated are brought together), etc. Other optimality principles that are employed in mapping situations, for example at the level of thought trials and that can add to variation in such trials by conceptual blending as in the case of metaphors, as stated before, are the web (maintain mappings to input concepts), unpacking (mapping schemes, other applications), good reason (significant elements, managerial, scanning, interpretation of concept as calling concept by another name), metonymic tightening (elements in the blend and the input), target and source concepts must be from distant domains, concreteness (select concrete not abstract concepts to blend with target concept) principles. To summarize Weick’s disciplinary imagination. Construct theoretical representations, not merely deduct them from the problem statement; The ‘logic’ (arguments?) used to develop and select representations by means of thought trials, simulation and imaginary experiments; Develop representations from heterogeneous variations; Evolutionary epistemology, in the form of variation, selection and retention. Variation of multiple and different images and metaphors that are apt, plausible (fulfilling the criteria of the optimality principles); this will create new insights for a conceptual advance (search for new concepts is an ongoing process of meaning construction).

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Generalizations and conclusions

In this articles I attempted to include a number of different things according to various perspectives and frames of reference of what philosophy is. I did not view philosophy from what types of subject-matter, problems or objects it is concerned with. I instead concentrated on the methodologies, the methods, the techniques, tools and procedures employed for doing philosophy and during the activities and processes of philosophizing. These things can be considered the data of our investigation. The will usually be applied during a narrative or a description executed by the philosopher. Such a narrative will consist of different steps and stages that can clearly be distinguished and differentiated from each other. It can occur on several levels simultaneously for example that of first-order philosophy/izing and second-order or meta-philosophy/izing. The philosopher can also employ other tools for example that of dialogue, by using different, opposing voices, at certain stages of presenting the narrative. The major point of my investigation was the nature of the process of theorizing. I found the methodologies, methods, tools etc of philosophy as presented and described by the different authors very restrictive, often misleading and taken out of the general context of philosophizing or philosophical theorizing. My suggestion as a remedy for these symptoms is the idea that philosophical activities and what are presented as the methods of different philosophical approaches and schools are in fact aspects of the process of theorizing. Practitioners appear to be unaware of the general process of theorizing and the fact that what they perceive and describe as a philosophical methodology and method are merely a stage in this general process or a single isolated feature of this process. I wish to make philosophers aware of these facts. And that they need to investigate the process/es of theorizing, the different features and stage of this/these processes – so that when they philosophize they will be aware of what stage of theorizing they are in and what aspect or feature of philosophizing they are concerned with. This is of course an aspect of meta-philosophy, a meta-philosophical view or critique executed simultaneously with their first-order philosophical activity/ies, be they of the analytical, deconstructive, critical theory kind or whatever method or approach they employ. I was surprised, amazed and even shocked when I read what philosophers think they are doing and what they say they or other philosophers are doing or have done. They appear to view their activities as if they exist and are executed in isolation and as if what they do (their particular isolated technique and approach) are the entire process of doing philosophy, of philosophizing. For example when they explore, investigate and analyse a concept or sets of concepts, they consider and present this as THE, entire, philosophical method, while in fact it is merely a certain, very common, frequently occurring feature of the process of theorizing (namely that one must constantly explore one’s concepts and experiment with alternative ones). The same can be said about other

104 so-called methods philosophers think they are employing, for example the Continentals and their followers such as the deconstructionists and the third and fourth generation critical theorists. Serious philosophers do not have to fear, I do not criticize their adherence to the traditional ‘methods’ of their particular school. I do not suggest that they should get rid of them or do something alien. I merely wish that they get into perspective what they, and other philosophers, are doing and what philosophers have done in the past. Namely, they are theorizing, they are executing the process/es of theorizing, while being unaware of it, with the consequence that they execute their doing of philosophy by means of their particular school or tradition’s method as if that is all, the entire process, from the (always new never exhausted) beginning to the (never ending|) end of philosophical theorizing, while in fact they are merely executing and concentrating on one or a few features of philosophical theorizing and/or one or a few stages of the process of philosophical theorizing.

Now with these thoughts and suggestions of mine, let us look again at a summary of what Wick says concerning theorizing and if what I have attempted to do in this article and my summary or conclusions in part 6 fulfil and realize the points he makes here. If my suggestions do realize a point I while make a simple exclamation mark next to it -

- Weick, Karl. E., Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination, Academy of Management Review, 1989, 14:4 516-531.

"Theorists often write trivial theories because their process of theory construction is hemmed in by methodological structures that favor validation rather than usefulness. (Lindblom, 1987). Too much validation takes away the value of imagination and selection in the process.

! I attempted to fulfil the useful, instrumental, practical function, although it seems to me what I suggested will stand up against validation as well.

Theorizing consists of disciplined imagination that unfolds in a manner analogous to artificial selection. It comes from the consistent application of selection criteria to "trial and error" thinking and the "imagination" in theorizing comes from deliberate diversity introduced into the problem statements, thought trials, and selection criteria that comprise that thinking."

! What I suggested fulfilled these ‘criteria’, or adhered to these norms or standards.

A theory is "an ordered set of assertions about a generic behavior or structure assumed to hold throughout a significantly broad range of specific instances."

! From my section or point 1 until my final point 6 I think I fulfilled this criteria, so that it almost appears as if I created a theory of philosophizing or the doing of philosophy as a process of theorizing.

Verification and validation mean the demonstration, beyond pure chance, that the ordered relationship predicted by the hypothesis exists and thereby lends support to the hypothesis. Proof is verification of a probabalistic statement. It is a statement of high reliability.

! yes or no?

A good theory is also a plausible theory, more interesing than obvious, irrelevant, or absurd,

105 obvious in novel ways, a source of unexpected connections, high in narrative rationality, aesthetically pleasing, etc.

! yes?

A good theory process should be designed to highlight relationships, connections and interdependencies in the phenomenon of interest.

! relationships between the philosophical discourse, the processes of doing philosophy and the processes of theorizing. a) Knowledge growth by intention is when an explanation of a whole region is made more and more clear and adequate. b)Knowledge growth by extension means a full explanation of a small region is used to explained adjacent regions.

! yes to a) what I suggested can be applied to b)

Bourgeois states that theorizing process should weave back and forth between intuition and data-based theorizing and between induction and deduction.

! did I go backwards and forwards between data and the making of inductions and deductions and between expressing intuitions and data based …? yes

Most theory theorists describe it as a more mechanistic process, with little appreciation for the intuitive, blind, wasteful.... quality of the process. They assume that validation is the ultimate test of the theory and a good theorizing process keeps this in mind at every step.

! yes, I identified and pointed out those things conceptually.

In reality, theory construction is not problem solving, because many steps happen simultaneously. It is more a struggle with "sensemaking".

! yes I executed many steps simultaneously and I concentrated on sense making by conceptualization of many features

When looking at philosophical writings it is obvious and rather surprising that philosophers are unaware of the socio-cultural practice and the process of theorizing. This is surprising because the process of doing philosophy resembles the different features and stage of the execution of theorizing. The systematic work of the major philosophers fits in well with the framework of theorizing, such as surveying of the object or subject-matter to be investigated by data collection and other practices, stating the problem as problem statements or problematization, exploration and stating of the problem and the concepts it involves in alternative ways, representation of them in several heterogeneous ways, submitting these things to a variety of thought trials, imaginary experiments or simulations (of images and representations) , applying optimality principles, the application of rational selection criteria employing evolutionary epistemology (variation, selection, retention) at all stages of the process of theorizing, drawing of conclusions, making generalizations and re-viewing hypotheses.

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The entire process will be presented by means of reasoning or a reasoned, coherent ‘narrative’ of argumentation, sound arguments and consistent, coherent, significant and plausible reasons.

We find that the major philosophers who developed grand, systematic theories adhere to and reveal the general framework of the entire process of theorizing, even if they do not deal with all features and the detailed stages of the process. Minor, derivative and academic thinkers appear to be unaware of the existence of theorizing and that they as aspiring philosophers are in fact executing this practice. The way they deal with ‘problems’ always select and represent merely one or more isolated features and stages of the entire framework of the process of theorizing. They seem to be ignorant of this fact and that they are really involved in, at least some features and aspects, of the process of theorizing. They employ and apply isolated ‘methods’, instruments, tools or techniques such as ‘analysis’, critical thinking and theory, deconstruction etc as if they represent the entire process of theorizing and as if their specific tool/s are really the entire philosophical methodology.

These words are about philosophy, the doing of philosophy and what philosophers do and what they think they do, so it is in fact meta-philosophical descriptions. They are intended as general statements about these things, generalizations, hypotheses, a model and pointers to a possible framework for a theory about what the doing of philosophy is like, what the process/es of philosophizing are like and what the processes of theorizing are like. The philosophical ‘methods’ that are referred to and described are in fact resembling different aspects and features, and different stages of the process of theorizing, for example identifying and describing the data that are collected as subject-matter to be investigated, deconstructed, analysed, dealt with phenomenologically, logically or by means of the tools of critical theory, the creation of problem statements involving this data, issues or problems,, the development and weighing of alternative conjectures concerning these things, the use of disciplined imagination, the selection, interpretation and retention of such conjectures, guiding ideas and concepts, meaning construction by means of variations of different sets of concepts, invention of concepts, use of simulations or imaginary experiments, imaginative representations eg by using metaphors in accordance with the eight optimality principles, applying selection criteria relevant to the particular stage of philosophizing, and other uses of thought trials, etc.

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