Platitudes and Metaphysics
Platitudes and Metaphysics
This chapter explores three ways in which the armchair method of analysis can assist in the assembling of “platitudes”. It is unknown whether these usages should count as “conceptual analysis” or not-perhaps the “location problem” will need to be resolved first. This chapter hopes to show that much of the method is of a kind with the method that Jackson, Lewis, and others take to be what we are doing when we are doing conceptual analysis. More options for the method are pointed out, and they help to solve the puzzle found at the beginning of this chapter: the problem of what philosophers could justifiably be doing when they employ armchair methods to solve metaphysical problems.
Keywords: armchair method, platitudes, conceptual analysis, location problem, Jackson, Lewis, metaphysical problems
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