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