This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology (including logical empiricism, phenomenology, and ordinary language philosophy). The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience.

An Introduction to Philosophical Methods is the first book to survey the various methods that philosophers use to support their views. Rigorous yet accessible, the book introduces and illustrates the methodological considerations that are involved in current philosophical debates. Where there is controversy, the book presents the case for each side, but highlights where the key difficulties with them lie. While eminently student-friendly, the book makes an important contribution to the debate regarding the acceptability of the various philosophical methods, and so it will also be of interest to more experienced philosophers.

'Philosophical Methodology' offers an up-to-date assessment of different methods of doing philosophy, and develops a novel account of the structure and goals of inquiry. It allows philosophers and students of philosophy to better understand their topics, and shows how philosophy can continue to make progress in answering its central questions.

Tamar Gendler draws together in this book a series of essays in which she investigates philosophical methodology, which is now emerging as a central topic of philosophical discussions. Three intertwined themes run through the volume: imagination, intuition and philosophical methodology. Each of the chapters focuses, in one way or another, on how we engage with subject matter that we take to be imaginary. This theme is explored in a wide range of cases, including scientific thought experiments, early childhood pretense, thought experiments concerning personal identity, fictional emotions, self-deception, Gettier cases, and the general relation of conceivability to possibility. Each of the chapters explores, in one way or another, the implications of this for how thought experiments and appeals to intuition can serve as mechanisms for supporting or refuting scientific or philosophical claims. And each of the chapters self-consciously exhibits a particular philosophical methodology: that of drawing both on empirical findings from contemporary psychology, and on classic texts in the philosophical tradition (particularly the work of Aristotle and Hume.) By exploring and exhibiting the fruitfulness of these interactions, Gendler promotes the value of engaging in such cross-disciplinary conversations in illuminating philosophical issues.

What methodology should philosophers follow? Should they rely on methods that can be conducted from the armchair? Or should they leave the armchair and turn to the methods of the natural sciences, such as experiments in the laboratory? Or is this opposition itself a false one? Arguments about philosophical methodology are raging in the wake of a number of often conflicting currents, such as the growth of experimental philosophy, the resurgence of interest in metaphysical questions, and the use of formal methods. This outstanding collection of specially-commissioned chapters by leading international philosophers discusses these questions and many more. It provides a comprehensive survey of philosophical methodology in the most important philosophical subjects: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics. A key feature of the collection is that philosophers discuss and evaluate contrasting approaches in each subject, offering a superb overview of the variety of methodological approaches - both naturalistic and non-naturalistic - in each of these areas. They examine important topics at the heart of methodological argument, including the role of intuitions and conceptual analysis, thought experiments, introspection, and the place that results from the natural sciences should have in philosophical theorizing. The collection begins with a fascinating exchange about philosophical naturalism between Timothy Williamson and Alexander Rosenberg, and also includes contributions from the following philosophers: Lynne Rudder Baker, Matt Bedke, Greg Currie, Michael Devitt, Matthew C. Haug, Jenann Ismael, Hilary Kornblith, Neil Levy, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Marie McGinn, David Papineau, Matthew Ratcliffe, Georges Rey, Jeffrey W. Roland, Barry C. Smith, Amie L. Thomasson, Valerie Tiberius, Jessica Wilson, and David W. Smith.

The volume provides clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The book gives equal weight to analytical and continental approaches, and pays attention to approaches that are often overlooked.

In this monograph, Steffen Ducheyne provides a historically detailed and systematically rich explication of Newton’s methodology. Throughout the pages of this book, it will be shown that Newton developed a complex natural-philosophical methodology which encompasses procedures to minimize inductive risk during the process of theory formation and which, thereby, surpasses a standard hypothetico-deductive methodological setting. Accordingly, it will be highlighted that the so-called ‘Newtonian Revolution’ was not restricted to the empirical and theoretical dimensions of science, but applied equally to the methodological dimension of science. Furthermore, it will be documented that Newton’s methodology was far from static and that it developed alongside with his scientific work. Attention will be paid not only to the successes of Newton’s innovative methodology, but equally to its tensions and limitations. Based on a thorough study of Newton’s extant manuscripts, this monograph will address and contextualize, inter alia, Newton’s causal realism, his views on action at a distance and space and time, the status of efficient causation in the /Principia/, the different phases of his methodology, his treatment of force and the constituents of the physico-mathematical models in the context of Book I of the /Principia/, the analytic part of the argument for universal gravitation, the meaning and significance of his regulae philosophandi, the methodological differences between his mechanical and optical work, and, finally, the interplay between Newton’s theology and his natural philosophy.