Tre tipi di teorie filosofiche

During the last ten years or so philosophy has seen a remarkable revival of the discussion on philosophical methods, stimulated in particular by the emergence of experimental philosophy. This is only the latest of several methodological inventions and movements that occurred in the last decades – like methodological intuitionism (in particular reflective equilibrium), naturalism, the linguistic turn with its analysis of ordinary language or the construction of ideal language, conceptual analysis, to mention only a few. Though this methodological discussion is welcome (without methods no cooperative and cumulative process of research with reliable results), such emphasis on methods is surprising. Methods, after all, are means, (hopefully successful) ways to a desired result (methodos), in this case, to knowledge. So the discussion about methods should be preceded by a debate on the aims of philosophy, i.e. the knowledge philosophy is striving for. The latter question, however, is discussed much too little and, if it is, mostly implicitly. After ciritically and shortly discussing some of the methods just mentioned, the paper will mainly be constructive, proposing an answer to the question about the aims of philosophy that implies methodological suggestions as well. This is done in a special way, namely by presenting, elaborating and justifying three types of philosophical theories. In the following some main ideas of this metaphilosophy will be presented. Though some philosophers deny that philosophy is striving for knowledge a quick view into some representative philosophical publications reveals that most philosophers have this aim. In addition, most single insights they believe in are thought to contribute to a bigger context of a system of knowledge, i.e. a coherent theory (under construction). So what is the philosophical question or the theory aimed at? Again, the idea that philosophy has one big question, which is an idea defended only by few philosophers, does not do justice to what is practiced in philosophy. Every philosophical discipline has its own question, if not several such questions, which often is already indicated in the discipline’s name (“philosophy of science”, “… of language”, “epistemology”, “moral philosophy” etc.) and which every trained specialist in the field is able to explain at least in a very rough way, though however the final details – e.g. what exactly philosophy of language has to find out about language – are much more obscure and to be explored in the paper. The differences between philosophical disciplines notwithstanding, at least three types of philosophical theories can be identified, which then establish also the details of what exactly has to be found out about the object of the respective philosophical discipline. In every philosophical discipline at least one of these types of theories is present, in many cases also two or even all three types are present. I do not exclude that there are still more types of valuable systematical philosophical theories; however, for the moment I have not found more. 1. Descriptive-nomological theories try to detect basic structures and law-like features of man and the world. Descriptive-nomological theories in philosophy fade into adjacent scientific theories in psychology, social or natural sciences. However, the philosophical theories look for somewhat different relations. While the sciences, broadly speaking, in technical intent are trying to find out the most elementary laws by which all events can be explained, descriptive-nomological theories in philosophy try to find out, in a self-enlightening and orienting intent, the invariant frame or situation in which we are moving, in particular the options open to us. In addition, the knowledge obtained in descriptive-nomological theories to a large extent is ancillary for the other two types of philosophical theories. Descriptive-nomological theories are e.g. developed in philosophical anthropology, action theory, philosophy of mind, natural epistemology, cosmology, moral psychology, and in some parts of social philosophy. 2. Idealising-hermeneutic theories in philosophy aim at self-enlightenment about the practical sense of certain types of actions, of action products, rules, systems of concepts, epistemological and ontological constructs etc., i.e. objects directly controlled by humans. While descriptive-nomological theories explore the frame in which we move, idealising-hermeneutic theories study how we move in this frame. However, this self-exploration is not meant to be merely empirical, i.e. psychological or sociological. But the aim is to understand the well justified intentions, objectives behind these objects and the considerations regarding the means for reaching these aims. More precisely, the aim is to find out what objectives we are properly striving for that are worth to be realised, as well as to determine the related ideal means already in use or ideal means as they may be composed out of elements already in use. Such a (re-)construction of intentions behind our practice is necessary because this practice is not completely understood, not set out in writing, usually simply copied and often bad. Idealising-hermeneutic theories exist in ethics, philosophy of science, aesthetic, philosophy of language, epistemology, ontology, logic, theory of argumentation etc. 3. Technical-constructive theories in philosophy aim at developing good and versatile instruments. They often build on the results of idealising-hermeneutic theories, in particular on what these theories have found out about the desired output of a certain instrument. They proceed by evaluating the instruments already provided by idealising-hermeneutic theories and then try to invent better instruments, e.g. good epistemic rules, moral norms, scientific methods, criteria of rationality, rules of argumentation. Because the transition from reconstructing possibly ideal instruments and inventing new ones is continuous, all philosophical disciplines with idealising-hermeneutic theories contain also technical-constructive theories. In the paper these three types of theories are elucidated in detail, their types of hypotheses, i.e. their axioms and theorems, and methods are specified. The types of theories are justified by showing their merits. In addition, the whole approach is defended against some important objections, such as doubts about the instrumentalist conception of philosophy inherent in large parts of the approach.