Timothy Williamson 
The Philosophy of Philosophy 

The Philosophy of Philosophy

The Blackwell / Brown Lectures in Philosophy

The Philosophy of Philosophy presents an original, unified concept of philosophy as a non-natural science. In this provocative work, distinguished philosopher Timothy Williamson challenges widely-held assumptions and clarifies long-standing misconceptions about the methodology and nature of philosophical inquiry. The author rejects the standard narratives of contemporary philosophy developed from naturalism, the linguistic turn, postmodern irony, and other prominent trends of the twentieth century. Viewing the method of philosophy as evolving from non-philosophical pursuits, Williamson provides readers with fresh insight into the ‘self-image’ of philosophy and offers new ways of understanding what philosophy is and how it actually works.

Now in its second edition, this landmark volume comprises the original book and the author’s subsequent work. New topics include the recent history of analytic philosophy, assessments of experimental philosophy, theories of concepts and understanding, Wittgensteinian approaches, popular philosophy, naturalism, morally-loaded examples in philosophy, philosophical applications of scientific methods, and many more. This edition features the author’s latest thoughts on a variety of issues, autobiographical reflections, and replies to critics.

The Philosophy of Philosophy, Second Edition remains essential reading for philosophers, scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in philosophy, and other readers with a sustained interest in the method and rationale of the doing of philosophy.

Table of Content

Preface to the Second Edition xi

Preface to the First Edition xxx

Acknowledgments xxxiii

Part I 1

Introduction 3

1 The Linguistic Turn and the Conceptual Turn 12

2 Taking Philosophical Questions at Face Value 25

3 Metaphysical Conceptions of Analyticity 50

4 Epistemological Conceptions of Analyticity 75

5 Knowledge of Metaphysical Modality 136

6 Thought Experiments 181

7 Evidence in Philosophy 210

8 Knowledge Maximization 249

Afterword Must Do Better 280

Appendix 1 Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic 295

Appendix 2 Counterfactual Donkeys 307

Part II 311

9 Widening the Picture 313

9.1 How Did We Get Here from There? The Transformation of Analytic Philosophy 313

9.2 Abductive Philosophy 351

9.3 Model-Building in Philosophy 372

9.4 Morally Loaded Cases in Philosophy 386

9.5 Reply to Dennett and Kuznetsov on Abductive Philosophy 401

9.6 Reply to Kuznetsov and Stoljar on Model-Building in Philosophy 404

10 Experimental Philosophy 406

10.1 Reply to Weinberg 406

10.2 Philosophical Expertise and the Burden of Proof 413

10.3 On Joshua Alexander’s Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction 431

10.4 Philosophical Criticisms of Experimental Philosophy 440

10.5 Reply to Dennett, Knobe, and Kuznetsov on ‘Philosophical Intuitions’ 464

11 Naturalism 467

11.1 Reply to Kornblith 467

11.2 Reply to Stalnaker 471

11.3 Reply to Bianchi 481

11.4 What is Naturalism? 484

11.5 The Unclarity of Naturalism 488

11.6 On Penelope Maddy’s What Do Philosophers Do? Skepticism and the Practice of Philosophy 491

12 Concepts, Understanding, Analyticity 497

12.1 Reply to Jackson 497

12.2 Reply to Boghossian 502

12.3 Reply to Peacocke 512

12.4 Reply to Misc!evic´ 520

12.5 Reply to Smokrovic´ 529

12.6 Reply to Trobok 533

13 Wittgensteinian Approaches 538

13.1 Reply to Moore 538

13.2 Reply to Horwich 543

13.3 Reply to Frascolla 553

13.4 Reply to Marconi 556

13.5 Reply to Tripodi 560

13.6 On Paul Horwich’s Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy 563

14 Miscellany 569

14.1 Reply to Ichikawa 569

14.2 Reply to Martin 575

14.3 On Robert Brandom’s Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas 579

14.4 On Peter Unger’s Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy 586

14.5 Plato Goes Pop 591

14.6 Popular Philosophy and Populist Philosophy 595

Bibliography 598

Index 619

About the author

Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University and Whitney Griswold Visiting Professor at Yale University. He was previously Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University, and has been Visiting Professor at MIT, Princeton University, University of Michigan, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His books include Identity and Discrimination, Vagueness, Doing Philosophy, Knowledge and its Limits, Modal Logic as Metaphysics, and Suppose and Tell.