The Poverty of Analysis |
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Authors: | David Papineau |
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Affiliation: | Philosophy, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK |
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Abstract: | I argue that philosophy is like science in three interesting and non-obvious ways. First, the claims made by philosophy are synthetic, not analytic: philosophical claims, just like scientific claims, are not guaranteed by the structure of the concepts they involve. Second, philosophical knowledge is a posteriori, not a priori: the claims established by philosophers depend on the same kind of empirical support as scientific theories. And finally, the central questions of philosophy concern actuality rather than necessity: philosophy is primarily aimed at understanding the actual world studied by science, not some further realm of metaphysical modality. |
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