Philosophy as Conceptual Engagement (PACE)

What kinds of methods do philosophers use? Philosophers are divided on this: some claim that philosophy is a priori and uses pure reasoning, others that philosophy relies on basic principles that are justified by intuition. Many claim that philosophy uses thought experiments and the method of cases. Others think philosophy is continuous with empirical science. Recently some insist that philosophy should use its own type of experiment. The variety of methods used and defended corresponds to different views of the primary subject matter of philosophy: some think philosophy concerns concepts, either the concepts we actually have, or the concepts it would be good to have. Others think that philosophy should not concern concepts at all, but concern things as they are independently of us. This controversy in metaphilosophy causes a foundational crisis: each of the conceptions of philosophical method on the market fits only a small portion of philosophy as actually practiced by philosophers, present and pastif any of the metaphilosophical views on offer were correct, then most philosophy would be misconceived. How to respond to this crisis? A dogmatic response insists that only one metaphilosophical view is correct, so much of philosophy has no value. We think this is neither desirable nor realistic. Another response is pessimistic pluralism. It says that philosophy has little unity as a subject: it concerns many different kinds of question, each warranting a different method. This is disappointing because it treats philosophy as a jumble of questions and methods joined only by historical accident. There is little to justify the optimistic view that a single unifying purpose holds together all of philosophy and is still waiting to be discovered. Our response to the problem is, however, cautiously optimistic: While philosophy is not completely uniform, there is nevertheless an overarching aim, to which many different parts of philosophy and their respective methods contribute. We call that aim conceptual engagement, that is: reflecting on our concepts with a view to self-understanding and improvement. Conceptual engagement involves three natural subtasks: a) finding out what concepts we have (e.g. which concept of truth do we actually have?), b) finding out about possible concepts and their properties in the abstract (which concepts of truth are there and what are their properties?), and c) deliberating on possible conceptual improvement (which concept of truth would it be good to have?). PACE explores the value and the limits of this hypothesis. 9 doctoral research projects will be subject to methodological discussions within the Vienna Doctoral School of Philosophy and with an audience of international experts. We expect many of the PhD-projects to involve some form of conceptual engagement. But finding clear examples of philosophical questions that do not fit the overarching aim of conceptual engagement would also be a valuable finding.