a comment I liked, for my records
Philosophy is the art of writing concepts down. The nature of philosophical expertise is conceptual notation.
Frege’s Begriffsschrift is of course the most explicit example. But he did not claim to invent philosophy; he simply found one way of expressing it. In my view, the later Wittgenstein’s “perspicuous presentation” (übersichtliche Darstellung), although a very different technique, was a development of the same expertise (he got the phrase from Frege too).
Philosophers are conceptual notaries. I normally contrast this with poetic “expertise”: poetry is the art of writing emotions down. Emotional notation (Ergriffsschrift).
Philosophers are experts at noting (paying attention to and drawing attention to) concepts. One way of understanding concepts is, of course, Frege’s. Concepts are “functions” that yield truth or falsity as values when they take an object as an argument. So philosophical expertise is an ability to characterize the (truth-) functional relationships among propositions. Not, as Sandy has already pointed out, the ability to assert true propositions (which is presumably something scientists do).
This is necessarily a simplification of philosophical expertise. But I would argue that any complexity must be introduced by a more complex definition of “concept” (and perhaps “notation”). Not by taking us beyond the art of conceptual notation (however broadly understood) and into some other business.
Having trouble thinking? Get a philosopher to show you your concepts.
From: http://el-prod.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=1497