engleski

On the Nature of Philosophy

The paper claims that what philosophy primarily does is interpret our notions, offer ways of understanding these notions that are not scientific in nature, but neither are they contrary to science. Philosophy does this by either endorsing a principle, standard, or criterion, or by inviting a seeing-as. A distinction is drawn between conceptual analysis, a highly constrained enterprise which is supposed to bring to light what was in the concept all along, and the interpretation of notions, a creative enterprise which offers unpredictable, new ways of understanding notions that were not already prefigured by the content of these notions - and it is claimed that philosophy consists in the latter, not the former. It is explained how these interpretations are justified and what the difference is between better and worse interpretations. The remainder of the paper is organized around three headings: philosophy and science, philosophy and language, and philosophy and progress. It is claimed that in philosophy there is no real progress, but that it does move forward because the notions at issue are endlessly interpretable.

interpretation, notions, seeing-as, conceptual analysis, science, language, progress

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