Afterword to the Panel Discussion on Armchair Philosophy

Abstract

In this paper I discuss Timothy Williamson’s panel paper “Armchair Philosophy”, the objections of the participants of the panel discussion and other possible reactions to it. The correspondence of the content of Williamson’s paper to the main themes of his book “Doing Philosophy” is shown, as well as the greater emphasis of his paper on the method of model building, upon which he bases his hope for the future of armchair philosophy. The analysis of the responses to the paper by Williamson received from Daniel Stoljar, Joshua Knobe, Daniel Dennett, and Anton Kuznetsov shows, however, that the version of the armchair philosophy proposed by Williamson does not raise much objections among principal opponents of the armchair approach and thus does not promote an a priori methodology that this kind of philosophy is supposed to defend and promote. More effective defense would require the use of a conceptual analysis that promises getting a priori or conceptual truths. Williamson, however, doubts the prospects for productive conceptual analysis. Nevertheless, the author of this afterword tries to show that the traditional conceptual analysis can be improved and that it is possible that such an improved analysis would perform its function of promoting the radical armchair philosophy much more effectively. Instead of clarifying some more or less interesting concepts conceptual analysis might aim at clarifying our natural beliefs, such as belief in causal dependance of ordinary events, in independent existence of the objects of our experience, in identity of some objects, in other minds, etc. In the process of such a clarifying we can also try to understand some non-trivial relations between our natural beliefs. The author provides an example of such an analysis, resulting in getting a truth which has all the marks of necessary conceptual truth, claiming there are a lot of similar truths to be found.