Concept Audits

The idea of concept auditing in philosophy is an innovation. Its rationale is as follows. When philosophers address an everyday-life conception on the order of knowledge, truth, justice, fairness, beauty, or the like and purports to be dealing with what it involves, then they must honor the existing meanings of these terms. And insofar as the prevailing is being contravened, they must explain how and justify why this is being done. They must, in sum, explain how his treatment of a topic relates to our established pre-systematic understanding of the issues involved and relate their deliberations to the prevailing conception of the matter they are proposing to discuss.The aim of a concept audit is to consider to what extent a given philosophical discussion honors this communicative obligation. The task of the present book is to explain and defend this procedure. And moving beyond this, the book considers a host of applications and exemplifications of these ideas. It shows how this method of conceptual auditing can function to elucidate and evaluate philosophical theses and doctrine across a wide spectrum of issues, ranging from logic to ethics and metaphysics. Accordingly, it explains and illustrates an instructive innovation in philosophical method.The merit of the book lies in its presenting a new departure in the study of philosophical methodology in a clear and acceptable way that shows the method at work with respect to a wide spectrum of important philosophical issues.