Abstract

This chapter is a reflection on three kinds of intellectual moves that tend to be revealing and influential in English-speaking philosophy, set in an autobiographical context. One move is to apply a new method to an issue that has been treated for a long while in other ways. A second is to look for data that are not entailed or adequately explained by existing theories and then to develop a theory that accounts for them while also making sense of data for which existing theories can account. A third is to find an assumption common to two long-standing disputants and advance an alternative to them both that does not rely on it. The essay includes strategic advice for budding philosophers who might want to take these kinds of approaches to their work.