Episode 37: Catarina Dutilh Novaes discusses methods in philosophy
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast ordinarily recorded at the University of Chicago, but which today is being brought to you from Amsterdam. I'm Matt Teichman, and with us today is Caterina Dutil Novise, assistant professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Groningen, and she's here to talk with us about methods in philosophy. Katharina Duty Novais, welcome.
Well, thank you. Thank you for uh inviting me for this podcast.
So over the course of the history of philosophy, philosophers have traditionally used all sorts of different methods to pursue the questions they want to pursue. What are some examples of different methods that different philosophers have used to try to give answers to the questions they're asking?
Okay, well, as I see it, looking on not only at past work and philosophy but also at present work and philosophy, there are four kinds of methodologies that I'm particularly interested in. Uh so I'm not saying that these are the only methodologies that are that have been used and that are interesting, but uh these are the ones that I'm particularly interested in. And in any case I think they really cover a lot of the methodological approaches that we see uh philosophers adopting now and also in the past. And these four methods that I'm interested in, the first group is the most difficult to define actually, because that would be sort of like traditional philosophical methods as in a priori reflection, conceptual reflection.
And that includes conceptual analysis. So for example, the the Socratic exercise of actually trying to define what we mean with the terms that we employ in regular situations, so the typical questions like what is time, what is knowledge, what is language, etcetera. So that would be conceptual analysis, but there's also the part of conceptual production, so the production of new concepts that could be useful for philosophical uh discussions and analysis. And also of deductive reasoning, so like I said uh drawing inferences, right? So the deducing conclusions from certain premises. All this belongs to this first category that I sort of call it the traditional philosophical methods. And the sort of the underlying characteristic is really that it's these are a priori methods, right?
So they uh rely on a priori reflection that doesn't need to engage with any external material. And they are also conducted in ordinary languages, right? Of course, regimented ordinary languages and of course with a lot of jargon, but still basically sort of just ordinary languages. So that would be the first group. The second group that I'm interested in is what you could call formal methods. And this consists in the application of logical and mathematical formalisms to investigate philosophical problems. And the examples I could cite is for example uh the use of possible world semantics to account for the concepts of necessity and uh possibility, right? So this formal framework which was developed by Kripke
But then meant to give an account, a technical account of the notions of necessity and possibility. And so these are will be sort of the formal approaches. Then the third group would be the historical approaches.
What is the purpose of the podcast and who is the guest?
And by this, I don't mean the study of the history of philosophy as such, as a goal in and of itself. I mean the use of the history of philosophy to understand and discuss certain concepts that are relevant to us now, right? Philosophically relevant to us now. And here it sort of comes close to what some people in continental philosophy. philosophy uh do under the heading of genealogy and archaeology, right? So Nietzschean genealogy and Foucault archaeology uh so that's that kind of thing. But it doesn't have to be only in this framework, right? I think that also in analytic philosophy there's a lot to be gained from contextualizing historically uh particular problem, a particular concept, a particular
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:32
2
What is the purpose of the podcast and who is the guest?
3:32–6:16
3
Which four methodological families does Catarina identify for philosophy?
6:16–9:37
4
How does the traditional philosophical method differ from formal methods?
9:37–19:24
5
What is the historical (genealogical) approach to philosophical concepts?
19:24–25:11
Speakers
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