The Philosophy Of Philosophy

The second volume in the Blackwell Brown Lectures in Philosophy, this volume offers an original and provocative take on the nature and methodology of philosophy.

• Based on public lectures at Brown University, given by the pre-eminent philosopher, Timothy Williamson
• Rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', the most distinctive trend of 20th century philosophy
• Explains the method of philosophy as a development from non-philosophical ways of thinking
• Suggests new ways of understanding what contemporary and past philosophers are doing

Timothy Williamson is Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts. Williamson is the author of Identity and Discrimination (1990), Vagueness (1996), Knowledge and its Limits (2000) and numerous articles on logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

1. The Linguistic Turn and the Conceptual Turn.

2. Taking Philosophical Questions at Face Value.

3. Metaphysical Conceptions of Analyticity.

4. Epistemological Conceptions of Analyticity.

5. Knowledge of Metaphysical Modality.

6. Thought Experiments.

7. Evidence in Philosophy.

8. Knowledge Maximization.

Afterword. Must Do Better.

Appendix 1. Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic.

Appendix 2. Counterfactual Donkeys.

Bibliography.

Index