The Metaphilosophy Blog

In recent years there’s been a lot of discussion on what is used as evidence in philosophy, but little discussion on what it means to use something as evidence in philosophy. Given how much disagreement persists on the first question, especially when it comes to the status of intuitions, perhaps we should shift our attention […]

P. West: Pause. Reflect. Think. H. de Cruz: In the mood for philosophy: on the importance of setting the mood for philosophical thinking. M. Keating: In Nyāya philosophy only some debates are worth having. M. Pigliucci: If there is pseudo-science, is there also pseudo-philosophy? S. Evnine: Philosophy through memes. E. Comay del Junco: Who Needs […]

Not that many people are keen on studying political philosophy in any shape or form, even though lots of people get really hung up on politics. Why is that? One reason is fairly straightforward: philosophy in general is just boring due to all its rigour, abstruseness, technicalities and hair-splitting distinctions. For virtually any x most […]

J. Broad: Early Modern Philosophy: A Perverse Thought Experiment. M. Lenz: Intellectual regrets. How do I figure out what to think? (Part II). R. Jardón: Pre-Twentieth Century Metaphilosophy and definition of Metaphilosophy. E. Schliesser: On Plagiarism in History of Philosophy. E. Schliesser: On How Public and Experimental Philosophy Disappears (as Philosophy), and Reappears. A. Douglas: Susan […]

Daniel Dennett argues that exploring some philosophical problems is like exploring a game he calls “chmess”: Chmess is just like chess except that the king can move two squares in any direction, not one. (…) There are just as many a priori truths of chmess as there are of chess (an infinity), and they are […]

One difference between science and philosophy is how they treat their own history. Physicists typically don’t spend too much time studying the theory of impetus, chemists don’t bother to learn about the theory of phlogiston, biologists don’t pay a lot of attention to the theory of the four humours, etc. They simply don’t need any […]

T. Williamson: What is metaphysics? M. Lenz: Why we shouldn’t study what we love. M. Lenz: Are philosophical classics too difficult for students? E. Schwitzgebel: Philosophy That Closes vs. Philosophy That Opens. E. Schwitzgebel: Why Writing Philosophy Is Hard (and Why Every Historical Philosopher Focuses on the Wrong Things). S. Guttinger: A Virus Is Not a […]

How do we tell whether a particular moral theory is correct? What kind of test do we carry out? What kind of evidence do we appeal to? Many people seem baffled by this question. And the confusion around it is, I think, one of the reasons why some philosophers get away with really awful arguments […]

According to Patricia Churchland, neurophilosophy studies “the impact of discoveries in neuroscience on a range of traditional philosophical questions about the nature of the mind”. The term has been around for more than three decades, but it doesn’t seem to have really caught on – apart from Churchland and her husband Paul, there aren’t too […]

Can most philosophical questions be reduced to just one basic question? John Searle thinks so: There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy. As a preliminary formulation, we can say the question is: How do we account for our conceptions of ourselves as a certain sort of human being in a universe that we […]