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There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. This chapter introduces a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but requiring noetic resources to be answered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the consequences of this definition for a conception of philosophy as the study (or ‘science’) of open questions, which uses conceptual design to analyse and answer them. That is the topic of Chapter 2.

Philosophy, understood as the study or science of open questions and their answers, becomes primarily a form of conceptual design. This is what we are going to see in this chapter, which offers an account and a defence of constructionism, both as a metaphilosophical approach and as a philosophical methodology, with some references to the philosophical tradition that has inspired it, the so-called ‘maker’s knowledge’ tradition. Here, we shall see that such constructionism needs to be reconciled with naturalism (recall that philosophy as conceptual design may be critical but also respectful of the best knowledge and reasonings we may have).

This chapter presents G. R. Malkani's 1949 essay, “Philosophical Truth,” in which he tackles the nature of philosophical questions and the role of philosophy vis á vis science, religion, and human affairs. Malkani was longtime director of the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner and was editor of the Philosophical Quarterly. He was influential both in his role as a convenor of all-India philosophical conferences at Amalner and in his role as editor of the then premier Indian philosophical journal. Malkani studied at the University of Bombay and began his career at Almaner. He was a noted Vedānta scholar who drew on Hegelian insights to expound and to defend Advaita. In his essay, Malkani first explores the question of whether Indian philosophy is stagnant and unprogressive before making his claim that a philosopher should be able to distinguish eternal truth from truth that is temporal, and that a philosophical question, if it is a legitimate one, must be capable of offering a complete solution. He also explores the concept of philosophical truth as well as the theory of truth to which Logical Positivism is driven by its own logic.

This chapter argues that philosophical questions are often born of crisis. They tend to arise when the people engaged in an endeavor like science or art face the possibility, not so much that their endeavor will not succeed, but that they do not really understand what success would consist of. In art, people may struggle to grasp the nature of artworks; or, to understand what methods, forms, and critical frameworks are appropriate to them. The most important examples of ambivalent proto-philosophical reflection on popular art concern the medium of comics, for which Will Eisner's term “sequential art” has served as a rallying point. The chapter cites Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth in examining how artists have, through their works, struggled with the nature and possibilities of the medium.

This Coda presents some final thoughts. This book has aimed to obliterate faith in external realism. No alternative faith has been offered. The text has merely rejected external realism arguing that it is ultimately incoherent. Internal realism has also been rejected. In fact, a (messy) brand of semantic externalism is offered here. The hope of this book is simply that we shall become more aware of what are are asking when we put forward philosophical questions, and as a result more sensitive to the limits of the answers that come.

Something in the vicinity of a naïve realist theory of colour is often defended by philosophers who are attracted towards some form of philosophical quietism. To say of such philosophers that they defend a naïve realist theory of colour is perhaps misleading. This is because, in different ways, quietists resist the force of the philosophical question to which a naïve realist theory is an answer. This chapter uses the discussion of naïve realist theories of colour to bring into focus some general meta-philosophical questions, arguing, contrary to proponents of quietist views in the vicinity of naïve realism, that colours really are distinct mind-independent properties.

This chapter reviews philosophical questions concerning freedom, purpose, design, destiny, teleology, spirituality, and even God, and addresses the model of discussion used by John Casti in his philosophical-scientific book Paradigms Lost. It provides the argument that evolution is unpredictable, contingent, nonrepeating, and directionless, as well as predictable, predetermined, and inevitable, and also presents the implications of the phenomenon of convergent evolution. The chapter shows that the phenomenon of convergent evolution leads to the review of Charles Darwin’s closing sentence, at least for carbon-based life.

This chapter is concerned with the use of conceptual analysis, particularly intuitions, in solving various philosophical problems such as the concepts of knowledge, free will, moral judgment, and intentional action, among others. Experimentalists make use of the Survey Model in conducting their studies since survey feedbacks produce data about which philosophical perspectives can be analyzed. An alternative model is the Dialogue Model of inquiry, which has proven to be more efficient as the philosopher can directly present alternate interpretations and varying examples for the subject to choose from, yielding even more fruitful results.

This chapter discusses the past and related concepts, such as memory and the conditions for memorialization. It is often thought that once an experience moves into the past, it is over, giving the past a frozen or fixed structure. There are no other universes where events keep occurring as they do in this universe. However, if the past is over, a problem arises because the past still structures the present. How can the past continue to have a living relation to the present if it is gone? Philosophical questions about the past must be asked so that possible answers may be discovered. The chapter focuses on contemporary philosophy, particularly the work of Ian Hacking, and the contributions of the German and French traditions to the discussion of these topics.

This chapter focuses on Buddhist philosophy, which involves thinking hard, often in detailed terms, about what reality is really like. What is there? This is the most basic question one can ask when trying to figure out what reality is really like. Another important task is figuring out which things are fundamental, that is, which things depend on other things? The whole point of examining philosophical questions is to help solve the problem of how to live. However, even though knowledge plays an important role in Buddhism, not all knowledge is equally useful. This is not particular to Buddhism: There are lots of things we might know that will not make a difference to life. The central Buddhist idea is that solving the problem in a sustainable way involves forming and executing a plan in light of how the world really is. For Buddhists, a large part of this project involves finding and removing distorting ways of relating to the world.

The chapter argues that John 13–17 constitutes a single unit, the Farewell Discourse. John 13:33–5 constitutes a rhetorical propositio, with 13:33 introducing sections i (13:36–14:31) and iii (16:16–33), and 13:34–5 introducing section ii (15:1–16:15). Section iv (John 17) of the Farewell Discourse takes the form of the prayer to God on behalf of the disciples that Jesus has announced in 14:15–17: that God will send them ‘another Paraclete, alias the pneuma, and so will sanctify the disciples. The philosophical question asks for the intrinsic, philosophical connection between Jesus going away (13:33) and his giving the love command (13:34–5). The answer is to be found in the role played by the pneuma (the Paraclete) both on Jesus’ departure (sections i and iii) and ‘in’ the full believers after Jesus’ death who constitute the Jesus ‘vine’ of section ii.

This chapter examines two general strands in Buddhism: philosophy and practice. Philosophy involves understanding the nature of the world and the mind. It involves careful examination, reasoning, and analysis of the world in general and the self in particular. Meanwhile, practice involves specific techniques to bring about a change in how we respond to the world. It aims at changing mental habits and ways of experiencing the world. These two aspects can, and often are, discussed separately. This is no surprise given how monumental each task is; people sometimes devote their entire lives to only one philosophical question or Buddhist practice. Nevertheless, these two aspects do inform each other. Philosophy helps to establish the aim of practice. Practice, on the other hand, can help one to have certain experiences which can, in turn, inform ideas about how the world works.