It occurred to me recently, while I was reading some article in the SEP, that academic philosophers (of the analytic variety) may be conceiving their project as one of charting the logical space of ‘tenable’ philosophical positions, rather than trying to eliminate as much of that space as possible. Of course the SEP may tend especially to give that impression, since it is meant to consist of review articles that summarise all the positions and arguments on a given topic which are taken seriously. But philosophers do often say that they are concerned with ‘conceptual analysis’, and to some extent this is taken to mean that philosophy is supposed to be the practice of analysing the subject matter (and methodology) of other fields, as opposed to having any subject matter of its own. Hence ‘philosophy of physics’, ‘philosophy of ethics’, ‘philosophy of biology’, … In other words, philosophy is taken to be a mode of investigation rather than a subject.
It occurred to me recently, while I was reading some article in the SEP, that academic philosophers (of the analytic variety) may be conceiving their project as one of charting the logical space of ‘tenable’ philosophical positions, rather than trying to eliminate as much of that space as possible. Of course the SEP may tend especially to give that impression, since it is meant to consist of review articles that summarise all the positions and arguments on a given topic which are taken seriously. But philosophers do often say that they are concerned with ‘conceptual analysis’, and to some extent this is taken to mean that philosophy is supposed to be the practice of analysing the subject matter (and methodology) of other fields, as opposed to having any subject matter of its own. Hence ‘philosophy of physics’, ‘philosophy of ethics’, ‘philosophy of biology’, … In other words, philosophy is taken to be a mode of investigation rather than a subject.