more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
I would say that all worthwhile philosophy consists of synthetic theorizing, evaluated against experience.
Gist of Idea
All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience
Source
David Papineau (Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge [2010], §1)
A Reaction
This is the view that philosophy is just science at a high level of abstraction, and he explicitly rejects 'conceptual analysis' as a fruitful activity. I need to take a stance on this one, but find I am in a state of paralysis. Welcome to philosophy...
| 13407 | All worthwhile philosophy is synthetic theorizing, evaluated by experience [Papineau] |
| 13406 | A priori knowledge is analytic - the structure of our concepts - and hence unimportant [Papineau] |
| 13408 | Intuition and thought-experiments embody substantial information about the world [Papineau] |
| 13409 | Our best theories may commit us to mathematical abstracta, but that doesn't justify the commitment [Papineau] |
| 13410 | Verificationism about concepts means you can't deny a theory, because you can't have the concept [Papineau] |