What standards exist for developing a philosophical model?

Question

Coming from the natural sciences, I typically see a scientific model as follows: A scientific model takes all available evidence and attempts to ascribe a relating structure to all this information that will allow one to make a set of predictions about the natural world. When new evidence is introduced or when the model fails to accurately predict universally, a new model must be developed or an existing one must be modified. Because of the inherent complexity of the world, a model has to compress information through structure. It cannot simply describe everything - it has to have sufficient structure such that very complex processes can be explained through simpler systems. This is a very general definition and can vary if you are talking about mathematical/statistical models or biological models.

In less quantitative fields such as philosophy/social sciences, it seems to me things are different. Many philosophers seem to start with observations or subjective "axioms" (sometimes including empirical data) about the world and then attempt to find an underlying structure that relates these observations. The resulting model is not always testable. It may simply collect observations together to try to unify them. Many philosophers that have done this an invent very detailed terminology to accomplish this (many of the Continental Philosophers such as Hegel, Sartre, and Heidegger come to mind). In fact, even in this post I am attempting to define how other philosopher develop models through my own personal observations of how I have seen models developed in other authors I have read.

In many cases, I will read about an author's personal model and disagree entirely about how the observations are organized. This can happen in the case of scientific models too (after all, the results may be objective but the interpretation can be subjective) but because it is working on testable hypotheses, it is possible to evaluate the model's success or failure to predict reality.

My question: Are there any standards for how models are developed in philosophy for rigor and accuracy? What guidelines are typically followed when developing a model? How does one ensure that the model is accurate universally and not subjective when it cannot be tested in a formal, scientific sense? How has this been treated historically (1850-1900 science) versus the modern scientific era?

Answer 1

Which standards? Well, I think there are two main standards:

Logical Coherence

In philosophy, every model (I will rather call them "theories" from now on) has to be reasoned carefully. Most lines of attack are against the logical coherence of a theory.

Just as in science there should be no falsifications of the model, in philosophy there should be no problem of coherence either. That is, the beliefs, statements and findings of a philosophical theory should be without explicit and implicit contradictions or, even worse, fallacies.

For example, Kant's ethics have been attacked not in the first place because of incoherence of the argument, but moreso because it is supposed to be applicable, while most people consider it inapplicable in particular situations.

Philosophers love to find contradictions and fallacies almost as much as pointing them out.

Historical coherence

By this, I basically mean 'Know your precedessors.' That is what universities prepare to, basically.

This does NOT mean that there can be no totally original, new theory of someone who doesn't know the history of philosophy. It does mean, however, that you should not redo the mistakes of former generations of philosophers.

This is, in my understanding, the main problem of (contemporary, that is!) philosophy: Because it is such a vast field and we are forced to publish relatively early within our educational development, philosophers tend to make mistakes that have been made centuries ago, often without realising it, because they did not even read the most important ones, not even thinking of understanding them.

Answer 2

There is no one universally acclaimed standard or set of criteria. One possible way of conceptualizing this is that philosophy is an earlier step on the road to understanding a subject than science. The philosopher may either be considering a topic that has never previously been formulated, or one that has proven resistant to analysis.

Sometimes the philosopher's chief contribution is just posing the right questions --it falls to someone else to organize the concepts in a testable manner. In retrospect, it may look like the philosopher's ideas are ridiculous, because we've all gotten used to the later, more developed version. But the real brilliance of the philosopher was thinking such a thing was even possible.

Answer 3

Excellent answers Philip Klocking. I have been working on theorizing (Weick et al) and personally think that philosophical methods, doing philosophizing is theorizing. It employs certain aspects of the processes of theorizing. Theorizing, theory-construction or theory-building is not only important in the the discourses of 'natural' sciences. See this link Theory in Social Science www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jpiliavi/357/theory.white.pdf Theory in Social Science. P I. What is a theory? < A. Definition from Schutt: A logically interrelated set of propositions about empirical reality. These propositions . It sets out 'theory' in details. I have written a lot on theorizing and the methods, methodology of doing philosophy, for example here -https://philpapers.org/profile/342710