Doin' Philosophy

And doing it right

This is a quick and dirty shortlist/summary of various aspect of doing philosophy well as I see it, academic and/or otherwise.

1) Hypotheticals: crucial, and frequently will be outlandish. Learn to love them, respect them, pay attention to them; they are important in pointing out inconsistencies, illustrating key points, stating cases effectively.

2) Outcomes/Conclusions - more often than not, you will come to crazy/unusual or just plain old disgusting conclusions. This is normal; learn to accept them. Try not to tailor your arguments to pre-concieved conclusions.

2a) Disgustingness - Get used to it. Reject emotional responses to disgust - philosophy sometimes starts, and sometimes ends, with disgusting/unpleasant ideas.

3) Questioning - Question everything, including very deeply held beliefs. Do not dismiss questions that seem absurd/unusual/unpleasant/disgusting unless they are unwarranted or irrelevant; even so, they may point you towards something interesting.

4) Methodology - How arguments are constructed, the nature of claims, distinguishing premises from conclusions, using conclusions for further building blocks, consistency, and especially conceptual analysis.

4a) Logical skills - you will need them, or need to develop them fast. Refers to both symbolic/quantitative/abstract logical skills (truth conditions i. e. disjuncts, conjuncts, validity and to a lesser extent, soundness) and argumentative logical skills (pointing out logical fallacies such as ad hominems, hypocrises, strawmen, necessary and sufficient conditions) The former isn't as important if you don't plan to study much symbolic logic, but is useful anyway. The latter I find invaluable pretty much anywhere.

4b) Conceptual analysis - upon further reflection, this is ridiculously useful, useful enough to warrant its own entry. It can take many forms (necessary & sufficient conditions, term definitions, empirical/conceptual claims as outlined below, and many other ways i'm sure) but the important thing is that it's hugely helpful.

4c) Distinguishing conceptual and empirical claims - this is really part of the conceptual analysis aspect above, but I find it so useful that it really should be emphasised. Methodologically, it's one of the best tools philosophy has. Basically, we can prove things right in two ways: conceptually, and empirically. Separating these two out greatly reduces and solves many many headaches and arguments. More on this coming. It's not particularly a massively difficult or radical idea, just one that seems to be underapplied, in my opinion.

This is what I can think of the top of my head, and i'm sure there's more. And yes, this is specifically written with 'analytic' philosophy in mind, because you continentals can go take a hike over to Cultural Studies you hacks have a different way of doing things, but I think a lot of this stuff applies. Feel free to add!

EDIT: slight additions, reordering in response to Markey's comment. TY BREN-DAN

The perils of doubt

A primer on informed agnosticism

Cynicism - why the bad rap?

Cynicism gets lumped with these labels of do-nothingness, laziness or with pessimism altogether. And I don't think that's fair or true. You can be a cynic, and wholeheartedly idealist; I want to try and rescue cynicism from these do-nothingness/laziness/pessimism labels that it's been attached with.

Cynicism is basically a form of informed agnosticism: it's not saying as the pessimist does, 'the world is never going to get better' or as the optimist does, 'the world is always going to get better'; it does not seek to ask or answer that question. You can be a cynic, and still give a full-faith effort to try things out.