Method(s) in philosophy

Factual Questions
1

Does anyone know very convincingly (yes, you understand that correctly; if you don’t think you do, tell me what you understand, and I will tell you how it is supposed to be understood) what is the method employed by philosophers. Consider how I would describe to be philosophy and its method. Here:

Philosophy is the continuous unending quest for the programming that exists or might exist or should exist in everything by speculative reasoning.

What do I mean by ‘speculative reasoning’?

First, reasoning: I guess we all understand what is reasoning. Otherwise, you tell me what you understand. As I write this post I am reasoning. As you read this post you are reasoning. Now, do we know what we both writing and reading here know what we understand as reasoning? If not, then you tell me, and I will see whether I can agree with your understanding. Now, is this philosophy or what? And if it is, it seems so silly. Maybe philosophy is all about what otherwise ordinary people discern to be silly questions.

Speculative, what is ‘speculative’? From the Latin noun speculum: mirror, by which we see an exact reflection of ourselves and things (but not as we would appear to ourselves were we to go about in front of ourselves – now is that philosophy or science?

When I –- I don’t know about you, but you guys being humans like me, I want to believe you have the same thought –- look into a mirror to view myself (although as I mentioned earlier, I don’t look to myself the way I should if I were standing in front of myself; I won’t make this comment again), I see the way I actually look like; but at the same time for myself I also have this wish that things were different and better with myself: I wished I would look different and better.

Philosophy is that speculum, that mirror by which we see things, everything, and wished things were different and better, at least better for myself or for the viewer.

Speculative thinking in this sense, sticking to the etymological denotation of speculum, is wishful and wistful thinking. That is my impression about the method of philosophers or the method in philosophy. And though I have not read very extensively the writings of philosophers, what I have read and I do still read, they do seem to be doing precisely that, bringing up all kinds of reasons in all kinds of reasoning ways to show their aspiration for the ways things might be different and ought to be, starting of course with first determining how things really are.

Is that why philosophy is not science. Is that why mathematics and logic are not within philosophy but science(?)

The philosophers and the scientists here, or the enthusiasts of the one and the other, please present your own ideas of the method of philosophy, or methods if several, and no one method is the method.

Susma Rio Sep

2

Philosophy does not have a method. Philosophy could conceivably be better characterized as the search for a method. This applies to practically all major philosophers: their main works consisted of a proposal of the definitive method of philosophy.

In fact, philosophy often consists in discussing methods used by other disciplines. Most sciences are based on a particular method; once you start questioning that, you are doing philosophy of (that particular) science.

3

Contrary to Tusculan, philosophy clearly does have a method. Otherwise every philosopher would be doing totally incompatible things. Philosophical method exists in the traditions and practices of philosophy, just as scientific method exists in the way scientists attempt to determine scientific truths (although philosophical method lacks some of the theoretical foundation of scientific method).

The method of philosophy consists in writing philosophical papers, which attempt to construct logically sound arguments which prove the validity of philosophical statements. The validity of a philosophical theory is based on the strength of the arguments for it.

A number of methods of argument are used, including syllogistic logic; thought experiments; proof by contradiction; reductio ad absurdam; argument by analogy. In addition, there are new philosophical methods, such as deconstruction, and very ancient methods, like Socratic dialogue.

Of course, philosophy is more than method, just as cookery or art are more than just technique.

4

“Oh, he isn’t insane. We are merely doing philosophy”.

–Wittgenstein, when explaining a colleagues behavior in a public park.

5

Actualy agree with refusal. I answered in the negative because I got the impression the OP used ‘method’ in a much more restrictive sense. What I mean is there is no single formal system that allows to separate non-philosophy from philosophy, or defines philosophy. Neither is there (as the OP seems to mean, but I must say he is not very clear on this) a single agreed on way to reach the goal of philosphy (presumably knowledge, but even on this point philosophers disagree).

All this stands in stark contrast to ‘normal’ science, where there are by and large agreed on notations, specific terminology, axioms and theorems, which largely define the boundaries in which acceptable scientific discourse takes place. Compare this to the sheer diversity of texts and approaches, which are for the most part next to impossible to translate into each other.

Telling is refusal’s last remark: “Of course, philosophy is more than method, just as cookery or art are more than just technique.” That’s exactly what I meant. The broad usage of ‘method’ as begin in essence synonymous to ‘practice’ has the disadvantage that the whole concept of method is stripped from its more distinctive traits. Philosophy is a practice, indeed, which is more then method.

6

Corrections:

“sheer diversity of texts and approaches in philosophy”

“more than method”

7

If philosophy is a speculum, sign me up!

Philosophy, I think, is when a person with an overdeveloped sense of order (due to genetics or upbringing or whatever) and too much time on his hands (due to being in prison or not having TV or not getting a lot of attention from the ladies) has the (possible fallacious) view that the universe and/or human affairs, behavior, morality, and government have (or should have) an underlying structure that can be both understood and figured (or planned) out.

The method of philosophy is like syllogistic brainstorming. What differentiates it from science is the element of testability and falsifiabilty. As a philosopher, you won’t generally be proven wrong in your lifetime. You’re thinking about stuff way out in front of any viable scientific method in that field. Once people have the tools to study a field, it becomes science. Physics, biology, and psychology all started as philosophy, but over time, as hypothoses were presented and tested, they became sciences.