The Philosophical Method(s)

Philosophy always was about answering questions, although it is quite difficult to say what kind of questions philosophy is in the business of trying to answer. Perhaps some sort of metaphilosophy is required, but whatever, that is not the subject of this post. Philosophy is an attempt to find answers to certain kinds of questions, and always was.

Over time, however, it was discovered that certain questions could be posed in such a way that answers could methodically be found, and thus the sciences were born (i.e. natural philosophy). This breakaway includes the "hard" and "soft" sciences, as well as the mathematical sciences; but this post is not about them. This post is about what remains, those leftover kinds of questions for which there exists no such methodical way of finding or determining the correctness of proposed answers... philosophy proper.

Of course, philosophy does have its methods. And, like natural philosophy, it does have questions, along with proposed answers. But unlike natural philosophy, the bridge from question to answer is neither empirical nor logical. So-called "analytic" philosophy is all too concerned with the attack and defense of theses, and in the process forgets to say much in the way of actually supporting theses, where "support" just means what gets a person to actually believe the thesis. Analytic philosophy, with its hack-and-slash "all the other theses are wrong so mine must be right" approach is sorely lacking in this regard.

A proper philosophical method should gently guide the inquisitor in their thought processes, crossing the bridge from question to answer. Wittgenstein attempted to do this in his latter years, but was quite brutish about it. Rather than gently guiding, he poked and prodded, and hoped the reader would take the correct steps on their own. The best philosophical methods could best be described as "gentle guides to crossing conceptual bridges".

But here I have made an error; one which must be resolved post-haste. I have conflated the finding of answers with getting others to see the veracity of those answers.

In general, scientists formulate hypotheses after careful observation, using a hybrid inductive-intuitive process, for while observation and induction play an important role in scientific hypothesis formulation, it is intuition that bridges the final gap between observation and explanation. And while logic and mathematics seem to offer clear paths to their answers, computational complexity requires brilliant intuition to find a clear path amongst an infinite number of false starts. Philosophers, on the other hand, have nothing but intuition.

Thus, in philosophy proper, we have two methods: pure intuition for finding answers, and gently guiding others to see the veracity of those answers.