Exploration, plumbing, and our conceptual lives: Murdoch and Midgley on how to understand philosophy and its methods
(2023) Wartime Quartet: Significance, Legacy, Spirit — Location: Durham University (7.June.2023)
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- Abstract
- The poster focuses on Iris Murdoch and Mary Midgley’s understanding of conceptual method in philosophy and particularly in ethics. First, the poster presents some elements of Murdoch's conception of philosophical reflection in ethics as an “imaginative exploration” (Murdoch 1956), and of Midgley's analogy between “philosophy and plumbing” (Midgley 1992). Some commonalities between their views will be shown, particularly regarding: the relationship between philosophy, science and literature; the idea of a form of “responsibility” in philosophical practice; the conceptual dimension of the method and objects of philosophy. Then, their conceptions of philosophy – and of ethics in particular – will be interpreted as a key element of Midgley and Murdoch's critical opposition against non-cognitivist theories of metaethics in the 20th century. This conflict, it will be argued, can be actualized in contemporary philosophy by showing how their conception of philosophy as a conceptual enterprise differs from the current “conceptual engineering” paradigm that sees philosophy as a technical problem-solving exercise (Isaac et al. 2022). Finally, I argue that Midgley and Murdoch shares a (Wittgenstenian) conception of philosophy as a therapeutic and transformative relationship to concepts, which engages the temperament and responsibility of philosophers in a way that is incompatible with current conceptual engineering approaches in ethics.
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Boldrini, M. (2023). Exploration, plumbing, and our conceptual lives: Murdoch and Midgley on how to understand philosophy and its methods. Wartime Quartet: Significance, Legacy, Spirit, Durham University.