An undergraduate at Rutgers writes:
I was wondering whether there were any recent books that you would say stand out as works on philosophical methodology these days. I've found a few books on philosophical method dating to the early formation of ordinary language analysis, but might there be more current treatments of the topic that are taken as generally reliable among academic philosophers these days? I often find that introductory books on philosophy seem to cover general philosophical topics and serve as repositories of knowledge in various areas, much like introductory books in Biology or Chemistry, but I was curious whether there was something more like a modern day "how to do a science experiment" book in philosophy, perhaps a "how to make a philosophical argument" or "how to do conceptual analysis", etc.
My guess is doing philosophy in some area is more useful for understanding the methods than reading about the methods, but I wonder what books readers might recommend in response to the student's query? Maybe there's some good stuff out there.
