Formalized philosophy is by no means uncontroversial. Obviously, this book would not have been written had not its author believed that useful insights can be gained from formal treatments of philosophical issues. The purpose of this chapter is to point out some of the advantages, but also some of the limitations, of formalization.

FORMALIZATION AND IDEALIZATION

A representation in formal language is always the outcome of a simplification for the sake of clarity, or in other words an idealization. To idealize in this sense means to perform a “deliberate simplifying of something complicated (a situation, a concept, etc.) with a view to achieving at least a partial understanding of that thing. It may involve a distortion of the original or it can simply mean a leaving aside of some components in a complex in order to focus the better on the remaining ones.”

Idealization – not necessarily in formal language – is omnipresent in science, and it seems to be so in philosophy as well. Many, probably most, of the crucial concepts in philosophical discourse originate through idealizations from nonphilosophical language. As one example, it is common in moral philosophy to regard “John ought to …,” “It is a duty for John to …,” and “John has an obligation to …” as synonymous, in spite of the fact that there are occasions when common usage would accept one or two of these phrases but not the other(s).