Philosophical Methods

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Philosophers try to know the nature of things by using some of the following techniques. For convenience, these techniques are organized under several general headings:

Standard Philosophical Inquiry Methods

Skills and Methods of Observation

General Observation and self-reflection Skills

General observation and self-reflection skills are useful in philosophy since one is more likely to understand something if it is accurately and carefully observed. Of course, these skills are not unique to philosophy, but they are still important to philosophical inquiry. Accurate and careful observation requires several component skills. For example, it helps to be able to distinguish "observations" from "judgements," and to distinguish how something appears from a first person perspective (how things look and feel uniquely to you and your perspective) and how it appears from a third person perspective (how you assume everyone sees things). Ultimately, observation involves a selective focus and that is partly driven by inquiry.

Phenomenological Methods or, Looking carefully at phenomena

Within philosophy, phenomenologists are philosophers who emphasize a variety of specific methods for getting an accurate and insightful description of phenomena. Phenomenologists generally emphasize methods for noticing the ways in which subjectivity appears to structure or alter perception.

As a philosophical tradition, phenomenology is typically dated from the work of early 20th century philosophers Edmund Husserl. But phenomenological critiques of his and others works have led to numerous distinct philosophical positions in the last hundred years from phenomenologically oriented philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Paul Ricoeur, Hans Georg Gadamer, and many others. Some of these philosophies involved distinctive methods noted below under "Hermeneutics, Geneologies, and Deconstructions."

Basic Conceptual Skills

Defining terms

You cannot always define your terms precisely at the beginning of an inquiry, but you should always be checking the way you use terms as you start to clarify your views. There are many ways of defining a concept or phenomena. Obviously, if there is a word for it, you can look it up in the dictionary. This gives you the lexcial definition. Or, you could point out the things to which the word applies. This called an ostensive or demonstrative definition. In precise contexts, philosophers sometimes try to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for using a word or concept.

"Defining" can also be thought of as an ongoing activity of inquiry since we often come to be able to define something well as we come to know it. In this process, "distinguishing senses" can be thought of as part of the activity of defining.

Distinguishing senses

Part of a process of definition, we distinguish senses when we notice either that we are using a word in different ways within a rationale (technically, the fallacy of equivocation) or when we notice that some principle or rationale is stronger or weaker depending upon the sense or meaning give to key terms.

Central Argument and Explanation Skills

Fundamental focus on argument

Rationales (arguments and explanations) are the most basic materials of philosophical arguments. Stating someone's rationales and point of view accurately is basic work in philosophy. Once articulated, rationales can be evaluated by questioning the truth of their premises, questioning the connection between the premises and the conclusion, or questioning the whole framework for the argument (including, for example, presuppositions). It is important to think of philosophers as people who ask "Why" questions and rationales (both arguments and explanations) as answers.

Fundamental focus on explanation

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Fitting principles to cases

Philosophy sometimes involves working from an initial intuition about a principle (e.g. "It is never right to lie.") and then looking at actual cases and deciding whether and how to "tailor" the principle to the cases which it "fits." This adjustment process can involve distinguishing senses, definition terms more precisely or looking for counter examples.

Discovering entailments

When two claims are connected in such a way that the truth of the first claim guarantees the truth of the second, you have an entailment relationship. (Think of Modus Ponens, for example.) Philosophers look for entailment relationships because they can be fit to a deductive model of reasoning, which carries the possibility of certain demonstration.

Searching for counter-examples

Maintaining logical consistency, or Searching out inconsistency

Acknowledging logical possibility, or Searching for Necessity

Theorizing from current and new knowledge

Philosophy is deeply shaped by the very same fields of knowledge that it helped develop! New work in neuroscience has completely changed the traditional field of "philosophy of mind, for example.

Using thought experiments

Thought experiments are fictional scenarios which highlight a principle or argument in a novel way. By our responses to a thought experiment, we might question or reinforce some intuition or hypothesis we have.

Dialectic -- logic in process...

Dialectics refers to the method of argument in which a dialogue exists between two or more people, with the goal of discovering the truth

Methods from Cultural Studies

Hermeneutic Methods, Geneologies and Deconstruction

General or Meta-level Methods

Discovering ignorance

We tend to think of inquiry as fruitful only when it produces positive results, but Socrates reminds us that the "discovery of ignorance" is itself a useful result. Often the reasons arguments or theories fail give you insights into a better theory.

Discovering limits of knowledge

Every kind and item of knowledge has a domain of applicability. This method is used to find those limits and consider what makes a method of knowing applicable to some object or situation.

Questioning presuppositions

All rationales involve premises which themselves depend upon other claims that are assumed within the rationale. While presuppositions are inevitable, philosophers like to articulate them to make them explicit and then question some of them if they appear unfounded or weak in some way. Questioning presuppositions can be thought of as a basic argument skill or a meta-level "move" in inquiry.