What is philosophy?
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Abstract
VIEWED, as Gilbert Ryle would have it, as a second-order discourse, philosophy can help us gain a clearer view of concepts of which we already have a mastery. If well done, it can enable us to command a clearer view of our use of words which, when we reflect on this use, can be puzzling. (We know well enough what time is until we try to say what we mean by "time.") Philosophy so domesticated can help us get clearer about our concepts and this may in some cases indirectly help us to get a little clearer about our lives and about what is the case and what may come to be the case, including a clearer picture of how these things hang together. It may, where we are talking about the historically great unifying concepts (knowledge, value, truth, existence, cause), help us to gain a better understanding of what in some sense must be the case. But this is invariably second-order knowledge (knowledge embodied in our talk about our talk about the world). Without knowledge of the world, including a knowing how to use our language, we could not have any second order knowledge or have any idea of whether our second-order truth claims are justified. We could hardly be in a position to assess Hume's or anyone else's analysis of causation unless we could recognize the truth or falsity of such sentences (or statements made by the use of such sentences) as "The bobber was caused to dip by the fish taking the bait"; "His bad breath was caused by all the raw garlic he ate"; "The moon's looking red was caused by the smoke in the sky which in turn was caused by the forest fire." If we understand the use of "cause" we understand those proper causal sentences while not under standing the following sentences "Its being red caused it to be colored" or "Philosophical dogmatism calmly causes." And if we have some understanding of the world?a kind of understanding we are not to expect from philosophy? we will in favored circumstances know whether those proper causal sentences are true or false. So in this important sense, that second-order knowledge is parasitical on a first-order knowledge of reality. Still, that second-order knowledge will give us a better understanding of what we already know. Second-order knowledge, that is, will give us a clearer picture of the workings of our language.