What are the foundations of philosophy?

Question

I'm a student majoring in mathematics. I've taken a course in mathematical logic and a course in set theory. My problem is basically that I'm always finding philosophical concepts, for example syntax, semantics, epistemology, denotation, intuitionism, constructivism, idealism, etc., and when I look up their meaning on Wikipedia there are still more and more new concepts. So I wonder that maybe instead I should start studying philosophy in a consistent and organized way instead of learning isolated concepts, but I don't know how to do that. To be more precise, in mathematics and in every other science mostly the basic concepts are given at the beginning and then everything goes from there. This we can call it "the foundations". For example, in mathematics we can start with logic and set theory. From them every other branch is derived: geometry, analysis, algebra,..., all of mathematics. This makes its study very pleasant and organized. My question is then if there's something similar to study philosophy. Where do I start? Is there an organized way to study philosophy?

Answer 1

The difficulty in answering this question is that the foundation of philosophy is in dispute. The field of philosophy of philosophy or metaphilosophy seeks to understand the nature of philosophy itself and so deals with questions such as "what is philosophy?", "what sort of questions does philosophy ask?", and "how should it try to answer those questions?".

So, given that these are open questions, getting to grips with a single foundation seems fairly implausible. However, there are intro to philosophy textbooks out there that do a good job introducing the different branches of philosophy and explaining various outlooks within them.

Overgaard's An Introduction to Metaphilosophy seems like it will offer you further elucidation on the topic I've discussed above. For an example of a textbook that explores different branches and outlooks within the field, see Solomon's The Big Questions.