The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology

958 Pages·2016·9.559 MB·English

by  Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, John Hawthorne

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
Oxford Handbooks Online
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology  
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
Edited by Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne
Print Publication Date: May 2016 Subject: Philosophy Online Publication Date: Aug 2016
(p. iv)
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Preface
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Preface  
Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
Edited by Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne
Print Publication Date: May 2016 Subject: Philosophy Online Publication Date: Aug 2016
Preface
(p. v)
Philosophy is a field where methodology plays two roles: it is both a framework for, and a
subject of, philosophical investigation. These two roles are deeply intertwined. Most sig­
nificant periods and movements in philosophy have been—at least in part—instigated by a
renewed methodology. And this renewal is typically accompanied by a renewed self-con­
sciousness—an explicit conception of philosophy and philosophizing as themselves sub­
jects of philosophical reflection. A surprisingly large portion of good philosophy is not on­
ly methodologically self-aware, but also methodologically innovative: think not only of Pla­
to, Descartes, and Wittgenstein, but also of the ways in which contemporary strands in
philosophy—from analytic metaphysics to feminist philosophy to empirically informed
work in moral psychology—are simultaneously interventions into first-order and second-
order philosophical questions. A volume on philosophical methodology is thus not merely
a work about how philosophy is done, but also a work of philosophy.
Philosophical methodology is not a field that comes pre-structured. What you think counts
as (a significant part of) methodology (or how you draw the distinction between first-and-
second order philosophy) and will depend in large part on your philosophical views—in
much the same way as what you count as philosophy does. That rendered the task of
putting together a volume like this one both challenging and exciting: part of our task
was simply figuring out the nature of the task. Many of our contributors asked us what
exactly we meant by “methodology” and we were deliberately non-committal in our re­
sponses: We didn’t want to impose a conception of methodology on the volume and our
contributors. As a result, the contributions in this volume illustrate the wide range of con­
ceptions of what counts as philosophical methodology. That is a central part of the
volume’s intention: a carefully curated tour of a range of meta-philosophical perspectives.
That said, the selection of topics does of course reveal something about our perspective.
One feature of the volume is particularly important to highlight: we have put a great deal
of focus on the connections between philosophy and other disciplines. About a third of the
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Preface
volume is devoted to explorations of these connections. This decision reflects what we
think is an important and characteristic feature of philosophy, both in its contemporary
incarnation and in its history. At its core, philosophy draws on, contributes to, and con­
nects fields outside philosophy. Maybe more so than any other discipline, philosophy
looks outside of itself. There is no limit on the kind of data and theorizing that a philoso­
pher can draw on. There are, of course, philosophers who argue against this conception
of philosophy and who think of philosophy as autonomous and fundamentally different
from, for example, empirical disciplines. But, as we see it, for those arguments to be re­
motely plausible they have to be understood as normative claims about what philosophy
ought to be. If we just look at the facts about what philosophers have done and are doing,
then this openness to other disciplines is striking.
(p. vi) We should admit to a limitation of this volume. The entries all concern what we can
coarsely describe as the “Western tradition” of philosophy, and are largely Anglo-Ameri­
can in approach. The volume is already massive (pushing the limits of what the publisher
would accept), and adding a correspondingly full range of entries on other approaches
was out of the question. The alternative—a single 20-page entry exploring themes from
different traditions in rapid-fire fashion—would fail to do justice to their significance and
complexity.
Even within our hemisphere, there is a rich world to explore. The volume begins with a
meditation on its central question: What is philosophical methodology? This is followed by
a cluster of essays that we call “Traditions and Approaches” which examine the topic of
philosophical methodology in the Western philosophical tradition from Ancient Greece to
the modern anglophone world. The next section explores a range of central “topics” in
philosophical methodology—from reflective equilibrium to conceptual analysis to philo­
sophical heuristics. The final section—“Philosophy and its Neighbors”—explores the
boundaries (or non-boundaries) between philosophical investigation and investigation in
fields such as linguistics, psychology, logic, and political theory.
Though we encouraged authors to read and respond to other essays in the volume, each
of the essays has retained the “voice” of its author. This, too, was a deliberate decision.
The range of methodological perspectives that this volume represents deserves this range
of minds that have been brought together to introduce them. We hope that you will enjoy
reading these marvelous entries as much as we have enjoyed preparing them for you.
Herman Cappelen
Tamar Szabó Gendler
John Hawthorne
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Acknowledgements
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Acknowledgements  
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
Edited by Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne
Print Publication Date: May 2016 Subject: Philosophy Online Publication Date: Aug 2016
Acknowledgements
(p. vii)
We are grateful to our three research assistants, Joshua Habgood-Coote, Aaron Norby,
and Daniele Sgaravatti, for invaluable support throughout the project. (p. viii)
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Figures
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Figures  
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
Edited by Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne
Print Publication Date: May 2016 Subject: Philosophy Online Publication Date: Aug 2016
Figures
(p. xiii)
15.1 Computer simulation of Schelling’s segregation model. On the left is shown a
random distribution of the agent times. As time moves forward, large clusters of the
two agent types form. 263
15.2 Three epistemic networks explored by Zollman. The nodes represent agents,
and the edges represent lines of communication. 276
15.3 A low dimensional epistemic landscape investigated in Weisberg and Muldoon,
2009. The x and y dimensions correspond to aspects of the research approach and
the z axis corresponds to degree of epistemic significance. 277
15.4 Epistemic progress of communities of agents of different types. 278
15.5 A depiction of the modeling cycle from Railsback and Grimm (2012). 282
22.1 Simple model of a thought experiment. 413
29.1 Graph of spatial and temporal resolution of neuroscientific techniques. 592
(p. xiv)
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About the Contributors
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About the Contributors  
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
Edited by Herman Cappelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne
Print Publication Date: May 2016 Subject: Philosophy Online Publication Date: Aug 2016
About the Contributors
(p. xv)
Louise Antony, University of Massachusetts
Avner Baz, Tufts University
Frederick C. Beiser, Syracuse University
John P. Burgess, Princeton University
Taylor Carman, Barnard College
Yuri Cath, La Trobe University
Gregory Currie, University of York
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About the Contributors
Josh Dever, University of Texas at Austin
Paul Franks, Yale University
Gary Gutting, University of Notre Dame
Alan Hájek, Australian National University
Christopher Hill, Brown University
Paul Horwich, New York University
Henry Jackman, York University
Jeffrey C. King, Rutgers
Thomas Kelly, Princeton University
Hilary Kornblith, University of Massachusetts
Alex Langlinais, Yale University
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About the Contributors
Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
Christian List, London School of Economics
Dominic McIver Lopes, University of British Columbia
Peter Ludlow, Northwestern University
Ishani Maitra, University of Michigan
Ron Mallon, Washington University in St. Louis
Charles Mills, CUNY Graduate Center
Daniel Nolan, Australian National University (p. xvi)
Calvin G. Normore, McGill University
Derk Pereboom, Cornell University
Christopher Pincock, Ohio State University
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