- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Figures
- About the Contributors
- What is Philosophical Methodology?
- The Methodology of the History of Philosophy
- Methodology in Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy
- Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Post-Kantian Philosophy
- Logical Empiricism
- Ordinary Language Philosophy
- Wittgenstein’s Global Deflationism
- Philosophical Naturalism
- Method in Analytic Metaphysics
- Phenomenology
- The Pragmatic Method
- Reflective Equilibrium
- Analytic–Synthetic and A Priori–A Posteriori History
- Philosophical and Conceptual Analysis
- Modeling
- Intuitions
- Philosophical Progress
- Conceivability and Possibility
- Philosophical Heuristics and Philosophical Methodology
- Disagreement in Philosophy: Its Epistemic Significance
- Faith and Reason
- Experimental Philosophy
- Transcendental Arguments
- Physics and Method
- Linguistic and Philosophical Methodology
- History of Ideas: A Defense
- The Methodology of Political Theory
- Philosophy and Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Logic and Philosophical Methodology
- Philosophy of Mathematics: Issues and Methods
- Methods in the Philosophy of Literature and Film
- Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
- The Methodology of Legal Philosophy
- Feminism
- Critical Philosophy of Race
- Index of Names
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This article focuses on the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths (i.e. every truth that isn’t analytic), and between a priori truths and a posteriori truths (i.e. every truth that isn’t a priori) in philosophy, beginning with a brief historical survey of work on the two distinctions, their relationship to each other, and to the necessary/contingent distinction. Four important stops in the history are considered: two involving Kant and W. V. O. Quine, and two relating to logical positivism and semantic externalism. The article then examines questions that have been raised about the analytic–synthetic and a priori–a posteriori distinctions, such as whether all distinctively philosophical truths fall on one side of the line and whether the distinction is relevant to philosophy. It also discusses the argument that there is a lot more a priori knowledge than we ever thought, and concludes by describing epistemological accounts of analyticity.
Keywords: analytic truth, synthetic truth, a priori truth, a posteriori truth, Kant, W. V. O. Quine, logical positivism, semantic externalism, philosophical truth, philosophy
Brian Weatherson is the Marshall M. Weinberg Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Arché research centre at the University of St Andrews.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Figures
- About the Contributors
- What is Philosophical Methodology?
- The Methodology of the History of Philosophy
- Methodology in Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy
- Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Post-Kantian Philosophy
- Logical Empiricism
- Ordinary Language Philosophy
- Wittgenstein’s Global Deflationism
- Philosophical Naturalism
- Method in Analytic Metaphysics
- Phenomenology
- The Pragmatic Method
- Reflective Equilibrium
- Analytic–Synthetic and A Priori–A Posteriori History
- Philosophical and Conceptual Analysis
- Modeling
- Intuitions
- Philosophical Progress
- Conceivability and Possibility
- Philosophical Heuristics and Philosophical Methodology
- Disagreement in Philosophy: Its Epistemic Significance
- Faith and Reason
- Experimental Philosophy
- Transcendental Arguments
- Physics and Method
- Linguistic and Philosophical Methodology
- History of Ideas: A Defense
- The Methodology of Political Theory
- Philosophy and Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Logic and Philosophical Methodology
- Philosophy of Mathematics: Issues and Methods
- Methods in the Philosophy of Literature and Film
- Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
- The Methodology of Legal Philosophy
- Feminism
- Critical Philosophy of Race
- Index of Names
- Index
