On Philosophical Method

Note: What follows is my response to an inquiry out of the blue (i.e., Internet) about philosophical method from one Joseph Forrest. 

Herewith some thoughts on philosophical method that result from my own labors in the field. I have come to the conclusion that philosophy is an empirical discipline and not just something you can do entirely in your head like math. Philosophy is commonly thought to be primarily conceptual analysis, but my point would be that (1) any empirical inquiry must involve that and (2) conceptual analysis itself is an empirical undertaking. A fabulous example, I think, is the way a planet was eliminated from our solar system without aid of a Death Star -- simply by redefining "planet" in light of new empirical research. For philosophy you need reading (of nonfiction and fiction) and experience and memory, and not just the logical faculty; so when the philosopher sits in his or her armchair, or at their computer, there is a great deal of input from the outside world on which to do the explicit reflection that constitutes philosophizing. That is what distinguishes it from math (though no doubt I am simplifying the process of doing math).  

What distinguishes philosophy from science is that science in the strict contemporary sense involves generating new data by technical or technological means on which to test one's hypotheses. The philosopher is perfectly free to read science, but, in their capacity of philosopher, does not bring new knowledge into the world except by posing thought experiments or making inferences that anyone can do in their head. Mainly, as Wittgenstein noted, the philosopher is in the business of summoning up reminders, that is, commonplaces or at any rate already existing items of human knowledge, to make a point. 

There are two important caveats to philosophical method, therefore. One is that philosophy can prove nothing. But this is not unique to philosophy, but simply a consequences of its being an empirical discipline, since, as Karl Popper argued, even scientific arguments are deductively fallacious. Specifically, they are affirming the consequent, thus: 

If theory T is true [antecedent], then observation O will be made [consequent].

O has been made.

Therefore theory T is true. 

That is an invalid inference. So the real work of an empirical form of knowledge or argument is to come up with a so-called inference to the best explanation, which, IMHO, amounts to a form of rhetoric (not in a derogatory sense). 

The second caveat is that philosophers rely on so-called intuitions as their bottom-line data, but intuitions are notoriously unreliable. A cottage industry in the field has recently arisen to deal with this very matter. It is called experimental philosophy, and the key figure here is Joshua Knobe at Yale. I myself am not much of a fan, although certainly they do some fine work. But in the end I see them as stymied by exactly the same considerations as any other empirical inquiry; and in the meantime with their scientific rigor they deny themselves the breadth of data I mentioned above that is available to "regular" philosophers. But the regular philosopher can happily avail themself of whatever data experimental philosophers may come up with. In fact I rather think of philosophy as precisely the inquiry into intuitions, which is to say that philosophy is premised on a skepticism about fundamental assumptions. 

So I see the role of philosophy as offering up alternatives to existing assumptions or intuitions or hypotheses. This is a valuable or useful thing in various ways. But in terms of "proving" things, all it gets you in the end are competing intuitions. At that point the individual philosopher (or reader or interlocutor etc.) is left to decide among them (or not decide) based on his or her purely contingent biases or preferences. And that I think sums up not only philosophy but human knowledge (if one wishes to grace it with that term at all) generally. 

Hence Socrates (and Marks): All I know is that I know nothing. (I think!) Welcome to philosophy!