Metafilosophy

Metafilosophy is the branch of philosophy that studies philosophy itself. It asks what philosophy is, what questions it should tackle, what counts as a good philosophical method, and what its aims and limits are. As a field, metafilosophy surveys the methods, aims, and underlying assumptions of philosophical practice and seeks to clarify how philosophers come to know what they claim.

Typical questions include: What is the aim of philosophy—clarification of concepts, justification of beliefs, or something else? Is philosophy continuous with science or distinct from it? Are there a priori foundations or is reasoning inseparable from empirical inquiry? What counts as a philosophical problem, and what makes an argument philosophically legitimate? How should philosophical disagreements be resolved, if at all?

Approaches vary: analytic metafilosophy often focuses on the nature and justification of philosophical methods such as conceptual analysis, argumentation, and thought experiments; continental metafilosophy might emphasize historical, critical, and interpretive dimensions of philosophy and its political or cultural roles. Naturalistic and empirical approaches treat philosophy as continuous with the sciences and cognitive psychology. Some philosophers examine the status and possibility of progress in philosophy and the reliability of intuitions.

Metafilosophy is distinct from but related to the philosophy of specific domains (ethics, mind, science). It informs debates about methodology, objectivity, and the aims of philosophy, and it remains a meta-level field with sometimes contentious disagreements about what counts as good philosophy.