Philosophical Debates in Human Geography and Their Impact on Graduate Students∗

∗The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper by Professors Douglas Fleming and Michael Dear and fellow graduate student Tim Strauss.

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries (Wittgenstein 1921, Paragraph 4.112).

Notes

∗The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper by Professors Douglas Fleming and Michael Dear and fellow graduate student Tim Strauss.

∗∗Lecturer, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511, Republic of Singapore (Ph.D., University of Washington).