Examining Philosophy Itself

YAFENG SHAN is a research fellow in epistemology in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cologne, Germany. He completed his Ph.D. at University College London. His main interests are philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. He is the author of Doing Integrated History and Philosophy of Science: A Case Study of the Origin of Genetics (2020) and the editor of New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress (2022). He has also published research articles in such journals as Synthese, Philosophy of Science, Metaphilosophy, and Philosophy Compass.

Notes on Contributors vii

Introduction: The Unexamined Philosophy Is Not Worth Doing 1
Yafeng Shan

Part 1: Defending Philosophy 9

1 Metametaphysics and Semantics 11
Timothy Williamson

2 Philosophy Doesn’t Need a Concept of Progress 29
Yafeng Shan

3 T-Philosophy 43
Chris Daly

Part 2: How to Do Philosophy 61

4 On the Continuity of Metaphysics with Science: Some Scepticism and Some Suggestions 63
Jack Ritchie

5 In Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy 89
Herman Cappelen and Matthew Mckeever

6 Testing and Discovery: Responding to Challenges to Digital Philosophy of Science 111
Charles H. Pence

7 Attentional Progress by Conceptual Engineering 133
Eve Kitsik

8 The Philosophy of Logical Practice 151
Ben Martin

9 One Philosopher’s Modus Ponens Is Another’s Modus Tollens: Pantomemes and Nisowir 175
Jon Williamson

10 Linking Perspectives: A Role for Poetry in Philosophical Inquiry 203
Karen Simecek

Part 3: Doing Philosophy 221

11 Grounding Interventionism: Conceptual and Epistemological Challenges 223
Amanda Bryant

12 Impossible Worlds and the Safety of Philosophical Beliefs 253
Zack Garrett and Zachariah Wrublewski

Index 277