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Philosophy

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Name: Doing Philosophy
Rating: 4.2 (112 reviews)
Author: Timothy Williamson

Timothy Williamson

From Common Curiosity To Logical Reasoning

4.2 (112 ratings)

26 mins

Brief summary

Doing Philosophy by Timothy Williamson offers a comprehensive introduction to the study of philosophy. It covers the key areas of the field, explores fundamental concepts, and provides practical techniques for critical thinking.

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Theoretical Philosophy Western Philosophy

Table of Contents

Doing Philosophy
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Glean insights from modern philosophy that will help you refine your thinking and sharpen your tongue.

Since the advent of the scientific method in the sixteenth century, the sciences have revolutionized our world. With unprecedented speed and leaving one world-changing discovery after another in their wake, the sciences have grown into what they are today – the empirical study of nearly everything. The success of the sciences has led many people to conclude that they have superseded philosophy as a mode of inquiry.

But the idea that philosophy has become irrelevant is a myth founded on obsolete ideas about what philosophers do and reflects a lack of awareness about what goes on inside philosophy departments around the world.

These blinks will give you a better understanding of what philosophy is and why it’s still important today. Along the way, you’ll learn many tricks of the trade that will help you to become a clearer thinker and a more persuasive speaker.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what zombies can teach us about the human mind;
how medieval philosophers turned debate into a game of chess; and
how philosophers contributed to the development of the modern computer.

Philosophy and science may seem like they’re in competition with each other, but they’re not.

We all philosophize from time to time. We philosophize when we stop dead in the street, struck by the question of what the purpose of life really is. We philosophize when someone challenges one of our deep convictions, forcing us to justify our views. In fact, philosophy is as essential to human existence as sleeping and breathing.

Of course, every discipline asks big questions and searches for evidence and reasons for their conclusions. A physicist might ask, “What is light?” A historian might ask, “What was feudalism?”

So what distinguishes philosophy from these other fields of inquiry?

Well, for one, it asks the most general questions of all. Like this one: Why is there something rather than nothing?

Admittedly, this question is pretty vague. It’s not clear how one would even begin to answer it. Without a doubt, questions like these contribute to the stereotype that philosophers just sit around pondering unanswerable and inconsequential questions.

Contrast this with the common image of the scientist as a fastidious experimenter who takes great pains to test and observe real-world phenomena. No wonder scientists have a better public image than philosophers!

But are scientists and philosophers really all that different? For most of European history, there was no distinction between philosophy and science, and people who studied nature were referred to as “natural philosophers.” It wasn’t until the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that science developed into a separate discipline, with its own methods and fields of study. Since then, of course, the sciences have made rapid progress, with one momentous discovery following another, leaving their mark on our world forever.

Today, it can seem as though science has superseded philosophy. While they study many of the same things, such as the nature of space and time, perhaps scientific methods are just better equipped to answer these questions.

But are scientific methods able to answer all the traditional problems of philosophy?

How, for instance, would you set up an experiment to answer a question like “Does the number seven exist?” After all, you can’t exactly observe the number seven, can you?

In the following blinks, we’ll take a look at some of the things that philosophers do, and we’ll see that philosophy has its own unique concerns, different from those of the natural sciences.

Philosophers examine, clarify and critique the concepts we use to communicate.

Once the natural sciences had established their usefulness in the study of the natural world, a seismic shift would take place in philosophy, which needed to carve out a new place for itself if it was going to survive in a changing world.

This shift would become known as the linguistic turn. It was during this period, at the turn of the twentieth century, that the focus of philosophy moved away from discussions about the nature of worldly things to discussions about the language we use to talk about them.

Philosophers devise imaginative thought experiments to justify their theories.

In much the same way that scientists devise physical experiments to test their hypotheses, philosophers devise thought experiments to test theirs.

A thought experiment is like a little story that puts a theoretical problem into context. It could be a possible scenario or a fanciful one; it doesn’t really matter.

Philosophers refine and strengthen their theories by defending them in debate.

Argumentation is a favorite pastime for philosophers. It’s considered a sign of success if a philosophical lecture breaks out into heated debate, and many lectures will pit two speakers against each other and have them duel it out as if in gladiatorial combat. From the outside, it might seem like philosophers have a perverse desire to have their work attacked and torn to shreds. But it’s all part of a timeworn process, going back to the very beginning of philosophy.

The combative element of philosophical debate is really just for the sake of performance, but it does serve a purpose: it helps to improve the theorist’s arguments. The process of defending their ideas from each other forces both parties to revise and modify their assumptions, buttressing their theories against their opponent’s attacks.

Sometimes, it’s useful to doubt assumptions usually taken for granted.

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates inaugurated the western philosophical tradition with his famously paradoxical utterance, “All I know is that I know nothing.” Many centuries later, the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes would launch the modern philosophical tradition by casting into doubt all that we think we know, including the existence of reality itself.

So philosophers have a penchant for doubting. It’s something they do a lot, doubting that our beliefs are true, doubting that our arguments are valid and doubting that our perceptions are accurate. The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume even argued that we have no reason to be sure the sun will rise tomorrow.

Philosophy makes progress just as any other science makes progress.

The achievements of the sciences are undeniable. Science has made rapid progress in the relatively short time it has existed. By comparison, philosophers seem to be discussing the same questions people have been asking for thousands of years, such as “What is ‘the good life?’” Whether they’re asking the wrong questions or using the wrong methods, philosophers just can’t seem to produce definitive answers.

Well, this is another stereotype about philosophy that needs to be dispelled.

Philosophy shares many of its methods with the natural sciences.

The experimental methods of the sciences and the armchair pontification of philosophy couldn’t be further apart, could they? Well, mathematicians come up with their conclusions from their office chairs, but their results aren’t considered any less scientific.

The truth is, the philosopher has to struggle against powerful stereotypes in the public imagination. Throughout history, philosophers have been described variously as hermits, spiritual gurus and political polemicists.

Philosophy’s preoccupation with its own history is a threat to its scientific ambitions.

Even today, it's normal for first-year philosophy students to begin their studies by reading Plato. So they really do start at the beginning, some two and a half thousand years ago.

Compare this with the sciences, where no one expects students to read, for example, the dialogues in which Galileo argues for the merits of a sun-centered cosmology. Scientists generally just take past discoveries for granted so they can get on with the business at hand.

Every discipline engages in philosophy to some degree.

It might seem like philosophy is only a marginal and unimportant subject today, since philosophy departments are so small. The truth, however, is that the spirit of philosophy is a part of every discipline. After all, disciplines turn to philosophical methods when they question their most fundamental concepts.

Most disciplines aren’t as obsessed as philosophy is with challenging their assumptions all the time. Mostly, their work builds off of basic assumptions. But now and then, it proves useful to go back to basics. When this happens, their work becomes a lot less experimental and a lot more philosophical. This happens when, say, economists stop making models based on the assumption that agents always act rationally, and instead question how rational people really are, or question what it means to be “rational” in the first place.

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What is Doing Philosophy about?

Doing Philosophy (2018) dispels some of the stereotypes that continue to hound philosophers. In particular, it takes aim at the pervasive idea that philosophy has become irrelevant in light of the success of the natural sciences, and makes a compelling case for why philosophy is still important and influential today.

Doing Philosophy Review

Doing Philosophy is a thought-provoking book by Timothy Williamson that explores the complexities and nuances of philosophical thinking. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With its clear and concise explanations, the book offers a deep understanding of various philosophical concepts, making it accessible to both beginners and advanced readers.
Through engaging examples and thought experiments, Williamson brings complex ideas to life, inviting readers to question their assumptions and expand their worldview.
The book encourages critical thinking and lively discussion, stimulating intellectual curiosity and allowing readers to explore philosophy in a way that is anything but boring.

Best quote from Doing Philosophy

Traditionally, philosophers have wanted to understand the nature of everything, in a very general way.

—Timothy Williamson

Who should read Doing Philosophy?

Scientifically-minded people convinced that science can solve all problems
Skeptics unconvinced by philosophy’s pretense that it is a science
Anyone curious to know what exactly philosophers do all day long

About the Author

Timothy Williamson is a professor of logic at Oxford University and current A. Whitney Griswold Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He has published several books, and many of them, including The Philosophy of Philosophy, have been translated into other languages. He has also contributed to major publications, including The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times.

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