This paper describes some of the methods usually grouped under the label of conceptual analysis. It delineates and compares three such methods: constructive method, detection method, and reductive conceptual analysis. For each of these three kinds of conceptual analysis, the problems which motivate its use are specified and the well-known instances of their application are discussed. Based on the general model of method as an ordered set of instructions, the three types of conceptual analysis differ in specifying the instructions involved in their use.
The notion of ethnic structure of society per se have been first singled out as the 'charger' of concepts of national and ethnic structures of society only at the end of the 1990's. The task of theoretical clarification of this problem is complicated by the unsettled state of concept-category apparatus, namely by identification of concepts of ethnic structure and ethnic composition of society, interpretation of nation as an ethnic phenomenon etc. The ethnic structure of society is one of the types (substructures) of its social structure. Consequently, the reasonable solution of society ethnic structuring questions is to be carried out on methodological principles of social structuring in general. The author uses as a basis Anthony Giddens' definition which assumes the social structure of society as a gnosiological construct. Meanwhile, the author emphsizes, that this structure is not merely a product of consciousness, but is the phenomenon based on relations between elements of empirically fixed ontological reality, that is social structure of a society. Therefore the relevant determination of the social structure notion presumes representation of its pluralistic essence and the distinction between social structure and composition of society. On these principles, the analysis of ethnic structure of a society is to be deepened up to the level of its concrete substructures, including ethnic one. Hereof, one can select its mere components brought up to tasks of political nation building.
The following text presents a philosophical and linguistic attempt to propose a cognitive-semantic tool allowing for a more precise definition and clarification of the meanings and structures of the terms beauty and aesthetic experience. The presented analysis stems from Gärdenfors’s theory of conceptual spaces and the premise that beauty and aesthetic experience create multidimensional conceptual spaces. The conceptual analysis of the basic terms, related concepts and connected dimensions will be used in their exploration, both in the everyday language, as well as in the specialized-scientific understanding (philosophy, aesthetics). The text also presents the results of the empirical research carried out by George Hosoya on mapping the terms of aesthetic emotions, which are put in context with the Gärdenfors’s model. It attempts to analyse our understanding of the basic moments and structures of aesthetic experience, as well as the possibilities in the research in them, by uncovering and describing different dimensions of the experience of beauty.
The article is designed to defend the thesis that conceptual analysis is the main method of analytic philosophy. Philosophical analysis pursued in analytic philosophy can be identified with conceptual analysis while concepts can be supposed to be the primary subject-matter of philosophical theories. The thesis can be justified by claiming that philosophical statements are either explicitly or implicitly modal. The truth of modal statements cannot be justified by methods used in (empirical) sciences; some other methods, namely conceptual analysis and related methods should be invoked. The thesis is illustrated by an example taken from the philosophy of language; it is also defended against the argument stemming from philosophical naturalism.
The article deals primarily with the Wittgensteinian contributions to metaphilosophy as rendered in the book Metaphilosophical investigations (T. Čana – D. Kamhal – R. Maco 2015). It focuses on the language and methods of the metaphilosophical elucidations and, in some cases, puts these elucidations under criticism for an incorrect usage of the key concepts. Critical remarks are also made with regard to the methodological maxims that require simplicity and transparency of philosophizing. In addition, the article offers some alternative solutions to the problems at issue. These solutions are above all metalinguistic recommendations and intended as contributions to therapeutic philosophy.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.