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The Methods and Problems of Philosophy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

Philosophy is commonly referred to as a “spirit” of inquiry, a general attitude toward things, rather than a body of conclusions; but as every spirit in this world must have a body, so philosophy must have a method. The expression, “philosophical method,” is used with somewhat varying meanings, but it is the question of how philosophical conclusions are attained that we have in mind in the present article.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1941

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References

page 58 note 1 See his article with that title in Contemporary British Philosophy, First Series (The Macmillan Co., 1924), pp. 359 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 58 note 2 The Macmillan Co., 1912. The chapter cited is to be found on pages 155 ff.

page 63 note 1 The word “reality” is here used simply as a general name for anything we may call “real” as distinguished from what is “unreal.”

page 64 note 1 That is to say, of “all that in any sense ‘is.’”

page 65 note 1 The much used but very dimcult-to-define term “spiritual” may best be understood here to refer to whatever is of distinctly personal concern, whatever man alone (or some superior personal being, such as God or an angel) is capable of appreciating and seeking.

page 65 note 2 So closely related are the ideas of “truth” and of “knowledge” that philosophical logic may also conveniently be considered in a sense a branch of epistemology.

page 68 note 1 Or, as the Germans say, Weltanschauung.

page 69 note 1 Sellars, Roy W., The Principles and Problems of Philosophy (The Macmillan Co., 1926), p. 38Google Scholar.

page 71 note 1 This particular example, by the way, is one of the first to be noted and commented upon by philosophers.

page 72 note 1 A figure so drawn that it does not represent very well either a duck or a rabbit, and yet looks enough like both for us to interpret it as first one and then the other. The problem discussed in the text is, which shall we “see” it as first?