Methods of

Philosophizing
Week 4 – Module 2.2
 Think of wisdom as the
summit of the mountain with
different paths to get there
 THE DIALECTIC METHOD
+ conceived by the Greek philosopher Socrates

The method comes from Socrates’ belief that a good life is based
on taking care of our soul.

The soul can only be good if we employ it in the activity of

having a clear awareness of the meaning of some words

We can achieve this by an act of “disciplined conversation”

 THE DIALECTIC METHOD
+ starts with eliciting the definition of a certain word from a
person who appears to be familiar (or “pretends” to be familiar)
with its meaning
+ points out the imperfections of the understanding of the
person through a series of questions.

What Socrates desires is for the person to realize his ignorance

and contradictions, and thereby correcting his own mistakes and
arriving at a complete knowledge of the true meaning of the word.
 THE DIALECTIC METHOD in MODERN
CONVERSATION
+ LATER called Socratic Method
+ modernized and treated in a different way by George Wilhelm
Hegel, a German philosopher and idealist
+ People are social beings and could be completely influenced by
other people’s ideas
THE DIALECTIC
METHOD in MODERN
CONVERSATION

FORMAL Dialectic
Method Dialectic Method
with LOVE
 The Pragmatic Method
+ started by Charles S. Pierce (1839-1914)
+ popularized by William James (1842-1910)
and
+ institutionalized in American culture by John
Dewey (1859-1952).
 The Pragmatic Method
+seek to make philosophy relevant by
solving real life problems.
+It is purely a philosophy of method and
not of substance.

LEARNING BY DOING and BEING USEFUL

+ aims is to test the dogma of science, religion
and philosophy by determining their
practical results.
+ The pragmatic test is:
if I practice this belief, will it bring success or
failure?
Will I solve problems or create problems?
+ Successful experience is the verification
process of truth for the pragmatists (Stumpf
2008).
 The Phenomenological Method
+ conceived by Edmund Husserl (born in
1859), one of the greatest intellects of the
19th century.
+ Husserl’s main purpose was to build a
philosophy free from any biases or
preconceived ideas.
 The Phenomenological Method
+ To know the truth, we must put aside one by one
all our limiting beliefs about the world which
represents our biases.
+ Husserl calls this process phenomenological
epoche (epoche is the Greek word for bracketing).
+ Bracketing is not ignoring. It is an act of stepping
back at our biases and prejudices to make sure
that they do not influence the way we think.
+ Only facts provided by immediate experience must
influence us.
The Primary and Secondary Reflections

+Reflection is not just a disinterested

look at experience. It emerged when
something valuable is at stake.
 SITUATIONAL EXPLANATION of PRIMARY
AND SECONDARY REFLECTION

Suppose you try to take a watch from your

pocket. To your surprise, the watch that you
expect to be there is not there.
A break from your ordinary routine happened.
From this break, reflection appears in the form
of a question: Where is my watch?
Then, a host of questions, connected to the first
one, followed: Where was the last time I’ve seen
my watch? Was there a hole in my pocket?
You try to retrace your steps from this moment
back to the time when you last saw your watch.
+ From the example, you will see that reflection
arise when there is a disruption from your
normal routine and when something
valuable is at stake.
+ Then, Marcel identified two levels of reflection:
primary reflection and secondary reflection.
Marcel applied these two levels of reflection to
the most fundamental question: Who am I?
The Primary and Secondary Reflections
+ Nowadays, we try to answer this question by
filling up a form given by our school for
example. The form asked us to write our name,
age, gender, address, name of parents, etc.
+ To answer this, of course we must think to
distinguish who we are (the self) against other
things (the non-self or objects).
+ This is the primary reflection.
The Primary and Secondary Reflections
+ The result of secondary reflection is a
more expansive view of the self until
it embraces the world. Thus, the
separation of the self and the world
brought about by primary reflection
were united by the secondary
reflection.
 The Analytic Method
+ initiated by philosophers at Cambridge University
(England): George Edward Moore (1873-1958),
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951).
+ to clarify how philosophers used words through an
analysis of language (Stumpf 2008).
+ ‘the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of
thought’ so that ‘the result of philosophy is not a number
of philosophical propositions, but to make propositions
clear”.
 The Analytic Method by Wittgenstein
+ The earlier Wittgenstein followed the idea that view language in
only one way: stating facts.

However, he soon realized that words had multiple functions

depending on the context to which it occurs.

+ Wittgenstein used the analogy of “tools in a toolbox” (Wittgenstein

1968). If we look at the tools inside a toolbox ‘there is a hammer,
pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a ruler, a glue pot, glue nails and screw.
The functions of words is as diverse as the functions of these
objects’ (quoted by Stumpf 2008).
 The Analytic Method by Wittgenstein
+ What Wittgenstein wants is to analyze language in the way
actual people used it in ordinary situations and not to construct
an ideal language based on logic and mathematics