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Those who have not studied philosophy typically find the idea of doing philosophy an odd one. The scientist has his laboratory, the archaeologist his excavation site, the historian his manuscripts and letters; what does the philosopher have? A strong coffee and a comfortable armchair? A long walk and a notebook? A discussion in the pub with a few drinks? All of these are tried and tested ways of doing philosophy. Let us take a closer look at what happens.

The Philosopher-Chemist

A good way to begin is to compare philosophy to chemistry. A chemist wants to know why things are the way they are. For example, a chemist might want to know why one substance dissolves whereas another doesn't. The chemist investigates or analyses'analyse' comes from Greek and means 'to unfasten, loosen'. these substances with the aim of constructing an explanation or theory. In the same way the philosopher is wants to know why things are the way they are and likewise analyses things and puts together theories.

The first difference between them is that the chemist and philosopher are looking in different places. The chemist is concerned with the material world at the atomic and molecular level. The physicist looks 'below' to the sub-atomic particles and the really foundational elements of our universe. The biologist looks 'above' to bigger structures such as cells. The philosopher is concerned with the fundamental questions about reality and our place in it. For example, yhey are more interested in whether we can know anything about the material world than its particular composition.

The second difference is to do with what the philosopher examines. The chemist takes substances and analyses them into their constituent parts to get a better understanding of them. In the same way, the philosopher breaks up concepts to get a better understanding of them. Their particular concern is the fundamental concepts of which have spoken about in the introduction, concepts such as truth, work of art, person and freedom. By analysing them, the philosopher constructs a theory about them. So, the philosopher might come up with a theory of what makes a particular thing a person.

The third difference is the methods they use. The chemist takes substances into the laboratory and analyses them with increasingly-sophisticated equipment. The philosopher thinks about the concepts. This strikes many people as a little strange. Surely you need more than just your brain! Well, let us not fall into the trap of thinking that the philosopher can sit in an armchair, disengaged from the world, and come up with answers. The philosopher needs to look at the world too. A philosopher who wants to know what makes something a work of art must look at works of art. A philosopher who wants to know what it is for words to have meaning must look at how people use language. But in neither case can a philosopher take things into a laboratory. Suppose that you picked some of the greatest works of art from the museums and galleries from acrosss the world and brought them into the chemistry department to find out what makes them special. What would you do? See which ones dissolve in acid? Analyse the composition of the paints? These tests are wholly inappropriate. The way to work out what makes something a work of art is to think about people understand by 'art', the role art plays in people's lives, and so on.

It is worth observing that the chemist is a philosopher too. A scientist doesn't simply throw substances randomly into test tubes and write down what he sees. The chemist needs to choose what tests to do and interpret the results. The chemist needs to think up a theory to explain what he sees and to think of ways to test it.

Conceptual Analysis

What's a concept? Here's a philosophical question in itself. So that we don't get hugely side-tracked, let us think in the following way. If you understand what I mean when I talk about a work of art, you have grasped the concept work of art. The concept captures that which makes something an artwork. We say that those things that are work of art fall under the concept work of art.

Let us assume that you do indeed have a grasp of the concept work of art. This does not make you an expert. Like most people, you will have a partial and confused grasp of the concept. You can identify some clear positive cases of works of art (e.g. the Mona Lisa) and some clear negative cases (e.g. your ears). You may have some thoughts about what makes something a work of art. These are your superficial thoughts or intuitions. You start doing philosophy when you start trying to get clearer on what the concept is.

So How Do You Do It?

Some things are works of art and some are not. The challenge is to find what they have in common so that we can explain what makes something a work of art. The first step is then to find clear cases of works of art. The second is to examine them and collect ideas about what they have in common. The third is to test your theory of what they have in common by trying to see if it gets things wrong or misses things out. Discussion (whether in the pub or not) is helpful at every stage. What seems like a winning idea to you may sound full of holes to someone else.

Here's a short list of some ideas we might have about what makes something a work of art:

• They are visual: paintings and sculptures.
• They represent something. (e.g. a portrait represents a face.)
• They are found in museums and galleries.
• They are supposed to make you feel a certain way.

Now, what would be really good would be if some combination of these ideas defined what it is to be a work of art. Here's a simple example of where this happens. The concept of a BLT sandwich is the concept of two slices of bread containing bacon, lettuce and tomato. We can write this out as an 'equation':

We have analysed the concept BLT quite literally into its four ingredients. The really important two things to understand are the following:

• Each ingredient is necessary: you can't have a BLT if the bacon is missing or the lettuce is missing...and so on.
• All the ingredients are sufficient: you don't need anything more than the two slices of bread, bacon, lettuce and tomato. It may be nice to have an olive on the side but it is not essential.

This give us a recipe for testing an analysis of the concept C

1. Collect all your claimed ingredients.
2. Ask of each of them: is this one necessary? Could something be C and yet lack it? If it could be C without it, it is not necessary - get rid of it.
3. Collect the ones you think are necessary.
4. Ask of all of them: are they sufficient together? Are they all you need to be C or is there something missing?

Necessary and Sufficient

So, how does our list fare for work of art? Not very well. Not even one of the ingredients are necessary!

• A work of art must be visual. No: some works of art must be heard or read - think of operas and novels.
• A work of art must represent something. No: consider a Jackson Pollock.
• A work of art must be in a museum of gallery. No: they can be privately owned.
• A work of art is supposed to make you feel a certain way. No: people react different to so-called works of art.

None of the ingredients is necessary. Let us now ask a second question. Are any of them individually sufficient? To illustrate this question, suppose we are investigating the concept sibling. If you are a brother of someone, then you are sibling. It is sufficient to be a brother to be sibling, we might say. Similarly, it is sufficient to be BLY to be a sandwich, sufficient to be a hamster to be a small horse and sufficient to be a metal to be entirely composed of mercury.

Why ask this question? By finding sufficient ingredients, you are at least on the right track. By knowing that a brother is a sibling, we at least know that brother is a concept worth looking at more closely to find out what a sibling is, even if being a brother is all it takes to be a sibling.

So, can we at least conclude that our ingredients are sufficient?

• If it is a visual something, it's work of art. No: a painted wall is a visual something but not a work of art.
• If it represents, it's a work of art: No: a map represents but it is not a work of art.
• If it is in a museum or gallery, it's a work of art. No: doors are found in museums and galleries but they are not works of art.
• If it makes you feel a certain way, it is a work of art: No: perhaps seeing a friend makes you feel the same 'certain way' as a work of art.

We should not course despair. You surely did not expect the concept work of art to be so easily analysable! Cracking open philosophical concepts is hard work. Some of these concepts have been under careful study for a very long time.

Concepts and Theories

To address the question what is a work of art? is to analyse a concept and come up with a theory. It is not always or even usually the case that philosophers start with a concept. They usually start with questions such as why does this happen? or why is this the way it is?. In answering these questions, they find themselves questioning the very concepts they are using. For example, many philosophers have wondered why the universe is the way it is. One theory is that it was designed this way by God. Now, it is not enough to say just this. You need to explain what this thing you call 'God' is. Is the concept of God one that makes sense? As we said in our introduction to philosophy, one of the things that makes philosophy distinctive is that it turns away from the world to ask about the very concepts we use to think about it.

Philosophers build theories. They also wonder what a theory is and what a good theory is. Since you will need to put together your own theories, you need to think a bit about these questions. Here are some criteria that a good theory should meet. We don't claim that this list is complete nor that any criterion is beyond debate. Furthermore, the discussion of each criterion may provoke further questions. Such is the nature of philosophy.

Here, then, are five criteria. It must be genuinely explanatory. It must be coherent. It must be systematic. It must be plausible. It must be simple. Let us look at these in a little more detail.

Genuinely Explanatory

Here's a well-known example (to philosophers, at least) to illustrate when a theory isn't genuinely explanatory. Bernard wants to know how sleeping tablets work. He visits Professor Borsuk. The Professor tells him that sleeping tablets work by containing a dormative power. Bernard asks what this is. The Professor tells him that a dormative power is ingredient capable of inducing sleep.

Bernard is rightly not satisfied. He has been told that sleeping tablets work by containing an ingredient that makes people sleep. The Professor may have given it a special name but this doesn't disguise the fact that we've not learned anything. A genuinely explanatory theory would tell us about the active chemical substance in the tablet and how it interacts with the body to cause sleep.

Coherence

A coherent explanation has parts that fit together like a jigsaw. If the parts don't fit, we get contradictions. Here's an example.

Professor Borsuk has been wondering what actions are right and wrong. One part of his theory says that saving someone's life is morally right. Another part says that killing someone is morally wrong. Professor Nornik points out that this leads to a problem. Suppose that a policeman can only save the life of the hostage by killing the hostage-taker. On the one hand, the action is right but on the other it is wrong. An action can't be both right and wrong. That's a contradiction. So Professor Borsuk's theory is incoherent.

Systematicity

A systematic explanation is a 'tidy' one that tries to explain things in terms of general principles rather than simply collecting together a lot of separate ideas. Once again, the best way to illustrate what we mean is by thinking of an unsystematic one.

Professor Borsuk has also been wondering what the mammals are. His theory is that a mammal is either a rabbit or a hedgehog or a rat or a giraffe...and so on. His exhaustive research means he has a list of some ten thousand animals. Yet this is not a systematic explanation. It has not identified common principles. It is merely a list.

Professor Borsuk tries again. A mammal is a land-based animal with two or four legs, except for whales and bats which are water-based and air-based mammals and flightless birds such as emus, kiwis, rheas and penguins and certain toads and... and so on. Although there are some general principles here, there are lots of exceptions. It is a bit of a mess.

And so he tries again. A mammal is an animal that gives birth to live young (is viviparous), has hair or fur and is warm-blooded. This is much better. You may be aware that there are still exceptions: the monotremes (platypuses and echidnas) lay eggs. Now, although we might desire a perfectly tidy analysis, we must also bear in mind that reality might be to some degree 'messy'. So, we may sometimes have to admit imperfect principles and exceptions.

We could say that that mammals must give birth to live young and decide to classify the monotremes as non-mammals. That would be tidier. But this would miss the fact that they are otherwise very similar. Here's another example to make a similar point. Professor Borsuk observed that all metals are solid at room temperature. Professor Nornik points out that mercury is something typically thought of as a metal and it is a liquid at room temperature. Unwilling to admit the exception, Professor Borsuk decides it is a non-metal. But this would be an extreme reaction. Mercury is like all the other metals in ever so many ways.

In both cases, people have tried to dig deeper still to find exceptionless rules to define the concepts mammal and metal. This is the right thing to do. But we should always be aware that sometimes, it might be worth admitting a few exceptions to avoid having tidy concepts that leave out things that should be classified the same way because they share so many similarities.

Plausibility

Philosophy starts with common-sense, intuitions and everyday observations. In a sense, it comes back to it too. If your theory of something has the consequence that our common-sense beliefs are in fact wildly wrong, then we will need a lot of persuading to accept it. Once again, let's use an example.

Professor Borsuk has become convinced that we don't know anything. If you know something, you have to be certain it is true he says. To be certain something is true, there can be no possibility that you are mistaken. And here's the problem. There's always that possibility. Even though it seems to me that I know that I am sitting before a computer, I could conceivably be having these experiences induced in me by a machine, like the Matrix.

Now, we certainly think we know a lot. We go to school, college and university to gain knowledge. We make a big fuss (e.g. in court) about whether someone knows something or merely thinks it to be true. So, there is a big difference between our intuitions about knowledge on the surface and the analysis of knowledge below. Just because it is presented as a philosophical analysis, we cannot simply accept it and give up our intuitions as it is only via those intuitions that we could get started. So, the case has to be really watertight to make us surrender them. As it happens, some have argued that there is such a watertight case and that we should.

Here's a different example you will encounter. We think we are free beings: free to choose (at least to some degree) how to behave. The concept matters to us a lot. We treat someone who freely does something wrong from someone who was forced. Yet the analysis of freedom quickly leads to a problem. We seem to live in a universe where everything obeys strict laws of nature and in which the future is therefore fixed. Think of gravity. It is a law of nature that massy objects attract one another. If you jump off the table, you will be attracted to the Earth. Furthermore, your future landing time is fixed by nature of gravity. But if the future is fixed, we have no choices and are not free.

Once again, we are confronted with the question of whether to surrender our intuitions or reject the analysis because it violates them. Philosophers divide over this question.

Simplicity

This may surprise you. Since when are theories of things simple? Aren't they meant to be complicated? If they weren't, wouldn't they just be part of common sense?

A simple theory in the sense we mean is not one that is easy to understand. It is one that tries to work with as few ingredients as possible; more precisely, as few and plausible ingredients as possible. The atomic theory provides a perfect example. The huge variety of substances are composed of a small number of elements which are themselves composed of three ingredients: protons, neutrons and electrons.

Once again, we don't always get what we want because reality might not be simple. It was fondly hoped not so long ago that there would be relatively few fundamental particles. It now turns out that there are a lot more.

Isn't This All A Bit 'Mathematical'?

You may be thinking that this sort of conceptual analysis is a little too cold and mechanical. What happened to working out how we should live, the meaning of life and whether there's a God?

We have not ignored these types of question. To answer them is to construct a theory. In constructing a theory, you will need to investigate the concepts you use. As we mentioned above, you can hardly use God in an explanation without thinking about what God is. Similarly, to think about what actions are right and wrong and what the good life is, you need to think about the concepts right, wrong and good.

Conclusion

As you will quickly discover, even if philosophers agree on what a good theory should be - and don't suppose that they do or that the list of criteria above are exhaustive - they disagree on which theory meets them. You will find that there are lots of well-defended theories that take very different views on the same problem!

Next, we shall look at how to write a philosophy essay and then the way in which philosophers put together arguments.

© COPYRIGHT 2007-12 Matthew Carmody and Paul Sheehy.