Lecture I

pp. 21-28

in: Leonard Nelson, A theory of philosophical fallacies, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

Philosophy, as the search for truth, is a matter of thinking, reasoning and arguing correctly; and so the interest in truth implies trying to avoid fallacies. Intuition cannot be a source of knowledge allowing us to attain truth in philosophy; in fact, the results of intuition-led philosophy contradict both the facts of experience and each other. Current fashionable forms of pseudo-philosophy are averse to reasoning, for they either despair of ever attaining truth or else trust in intuition as their guide. Nonetheless, a certain "feeling for truth", which is not the same as intuition, is crucial for philosophical thinking and argumentation.