But I doubt if any of the other tasks which I would like to see the philosophers fulfill will be enough to satisfy some people who raise this objection. They want philosophy to be grand, to yield one important, nonempirical information which will help one to solve either the world's problems or one's personal problems, or both. To them I feel inclined...
Grice on Conceptual Analysis and Mystification
Many of the great philosophers’ questions can be interpreted as requests for a conceptual analysis (not necessarily in full with the greatest precision). No doubt the great philosophers themselves did not recognize the possibility of this kind of interpretation (how could they have?), but the link between contemporary discussion and their work is...
Foot on why she wrote psychologism at the beggining
I wrote it because I knew that I needed to attack that preconception in order to get so much as a hearing for the thought that there is no change in the meaning of 'good' between the word as it appears in ‘good roots’ and as it appears in ‘good dispositions of the human will’.
Foot, 2001, Natural Goodne...