What kind of subject is philosophy? This book takes up this perennial question, defending the view that philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, construed broadly. Conceptual analysis is understood to involve the search for de re essences, but the book takes up various challenges to this meta-philosophy: that some concepts are merely family resemblance concepts with no definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (“game”, “language”); that it is impossible to provide sufficient conditions for some philosophically important concepts without circularity (“knowledge”, “intentiona ... More

What kind of subject is philosophy? This book takes up this perennial question, defending the view that philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, construed broadly. Conceptual analysis is understood to involve the search for de re essences, but the book takes up various challenges to this meta-philosophy: that some concepts are merely family resemblance concepts with no definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (“game”, “language”); that it is impossible to provide sufficient conditions for some philosophically important concepts without circularity (“knowledge”, “intentional action”); that there exists an unsolved paradox of analysis; that there is no well-defined analytic-synthetic distinction; that names have no definition; and that conceptual analysis is not properly naturalistic. Ultimately, the text finds none of these objections convincing: analysis emerges as both possible and fruitful. At the same time, it rejects the idea of the “linguistic turn”, arguing that analysis is not directed to language as such, but at reality. Going on to distinguish several types of analysis, with an emphasis on classical decompositional analysis, this book shows different philosophical traditions to be engaged in conceptual analysis when properly understood. Philosophical activity has the kind of value possessed by play, the text claims, which differs from the kind of value possessed by scientific activity. The book concludes with an analytic discussion of the prospects for traditional ontology and the nature of instantiation.