What do you study in philosophy when you want to study the method of reasoning itself? Is that outside of philosophy?

What do you study in philosophy when you want to study the method of reasoning itself? Is that outside of philosophy?

What I'm interested in is the correct method of reason that would lead to truth whatever it would be, barring the less than certain empirical sciences if that is possible. I was under the impression that philosophy of language, logic, and maybe phil. of maths would go over this topic. Then I found out that theories of truth are under epistemology and I'm not sure where to go with this.

look into rationalism. Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza.

Descartes is a good place to start. Just ignore him when he starts using God to fill in the gaps.

Study maths, the only method of reasoning and deduction that can ever be certifiably true.

Is my want for a foundation irrational? I enjoy maths but then I want to work exclusively on foundations and I know that that project has largely been given up.

I read Descartes a long time ago. I'll go back and reread his principles. I've always wanted to read the other two.

However, is this going to lead me to some bs german idealism?

Logic, mainly. Epistemology or theory of knowledge used to be a very popular field until the last century when a lot of its questions got reformulated into philosophy of language.

Descartes does a pretty good job at making himself look like a twat by the end of Meditations, so no it won't lead you to german idealism.

I personally like descartes' meditations because his initial rule is to reject anything that could be doubted, which is a decent starting point for rationalism.

have you read any Wittgenstein?

Is logic a dead field? I do enjoy it but then I wonder if Wittgenstein, Searle, or Kripke are right about the general notion that an ideal language is not the right way to go about doing this project. That Frege got the wrong picture of language with his logicism.

I just started reading Wittgenstein. Right now it is On Certainity, and I just got PI in the mail.

However right now I'm focused on Russell, Strawson, and Kripke. I wanted to give ideal language a big try and now I'm worrying about this approach.

Also could you explain this?

>until the last century when a lot of its questions got reformulated into philosophy of language.

Basically what I meant is idea that we can't do philosophy, or we can't establish a solid method/foundation for philosophical knowledge without paying attention to our use of language.

Another user recommended escartes and the rationalists. Modern philosophy was based on the idea that the subject is something separate from the world, and the only thing we have direct experience of (I think therefore I am). Our knowledge of the object was mediated by either categories such as spac-time, or by concepts. This is the classic framework for modern epistemology

Against this duality of subject-object, many XX century thinkers postulated that, to quote Heidegger, we are IN-the-world, and not IN FRONT OF-the world. That is, we have an unshakeable pre-ontological comprehension of things because we exist in a network of relations that allow us to interpret the world. This network is often said to be the language and/or culture. We subjects are no longer separate from objects. It is not the job of philosophy to KNOW the world but to interpret it. And to interpret it we must do so by analyzing the language, its uses and their relationship with the world.

This idea will appear in Wittgenstein, and it's what he meant by the "background" which he often compared to a riverbed. I think that this background was somewhat equivalent for grammar in WIttgenstein''s case. But I don't know enough about the late Wittgenstein to be sure.

>It is not the job of philosophy to KNOW the world but to interpret it.
Perhaps interpret is not the appropriate word, "understand" would be more fitting. The main idea is that you don't have to go outside of your subjective sphere in the cognitive act.

I don't know if I'm making sense, it's hard to talk about these things in English.

I'm not really interested in continental philosophy. I thought you were talking about philosophy of language, which is from what I understand mainly analytic

I have sort of a similar question. Is it really rational to believe anything you read? After all, whenever I read a history book or news article, I cannot actually see for myself that it is true. I just have to take their word for it.

I'm the OP and this is different from what I am getting at since it's empirical.

You're never going to have certainty, but depending on the situation you can at least be certain that they got something wrong. If its a journalistic piece on science, you can check the sources to see if they got the science right.

You can do this generally as well, but I''m not sure how some disciplines like history justify their claims. If you look that up you could then check them on their own criteria for what is good or bad work, but the criteria itself might be weak

I do come from a continental backgrund (hence my quoting Heidegger) but the linguistic turn as I have described it is mostly an analytic thing.
In fact the name "analytic" itself should give you an idea of the importance they place in the analysis of concepts and our use of language. Austin, Wittgenstein, Russell, Ramsey, the Oxford philosophy in general is skeptical about epistemology and favours philosophy of language instead. For instance, Moore's Proof of the external world, which sets the basis for a whole load of analytic philosophy, is a direct rejection of Descartes hyperbolic doubt which is manifested in the subject-objet distinction, and came to taint all the later philosophy of knowledge.

literally one of the most famous works of philosophy is called critique of pure reason. what the fuck do you think that one's about?

>ITT: Kant and various Kantlets
Start with Aristotle and go on very carefully from there. If you read something that doesn't seem to make any intuitive sense, don't just let it slide. The universe makes sense, it's just philosophers like fucking Kant and Plato that try their hardest to jew you into questioning the fundamental validity of logic and consciousness.
>A
>IS
>A
And don't you forget it.

I'm not interested in idealism.

logic is a human construct

So what

>Aristotle
Literally got btfo before he even wrote anything. Please disregard brainlets like this dude OP.

>tfw too intelligent to believe in childish fairy tales like existence, identity, non-contradiction, logic, consciousness, objective reality