Abstract
Analytic metaphysics as informed by the Enlightenment Project is misguided because:
There is a pre-conceptual domain that is not itself conceptualizable; hence there is not and cannot be a successful theory about when the meaning of a concept has been extended as opposed to when the concept has been changed; a theoretical account is only successful when it meets previously agreed upon norms; what these norms are can only be explicated and never theorized about.
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Notes (Chapter 12)
I approach this question [the definition of analytic philosophy] with trepidation. Not only it is [sic] certain to be addressed elsewhere in this volume [in fact, it is nowhere addressed], but there is no clear agreement about who counts as an analytic philosopher .... I do not wish to debate here the extent to which the analytic movement represents a genuine break with traditional philosophy .... I find it exceedingly difficult to say with any precision what a philosophical movement is and what purpose is served in characterizing a particular movement one way rather than another“ Resnick (1981), pp. 84–88.
Ayer’s (1982) assessment of Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method is that it is “a contribution to belles-lettres rather than philosophy” (p. 193).
some philosophers have tried to answer questions of psychology and thought mistakenly that they were doing philosophy“ Corrado (1975), p. xi.
When one denies that there is a cultural phenomenon of analytic philosophy what is meant, initially, is that there is no readily identifiable institution called `analytic philosophy’. To be sure, there is no such institution in the strong sense that there is an institution like the ASPCA. That is, there is no institution which has on its letter head the phrase `analytic philosophy’ nor is such an institution given tax exempt status by the IRS, etc. However, this does not show that there is no such cultural phenomenon in the sense of individuals who identify and interact with each other in specified ways (e.g., journals, publishers, editorial boards, granting agencies, academic programs, etc.). Moreover, the lack of a standard usage may indicate a prior inability to see the phenomenon clearly; or, it may reflect that few if any cultural phenomena emerge in a completely planned and fully spelled out form; or, analytic philosophers may have reasons not to want to introduce a standardized usage or definition. Even if there has not been a standard usage up until now, there are good reasons for wanting to retain the expression. We suspect that the expression is too deeply ingrained to eradicate. We believe it is historically and philosophically significant that “analytic” philosophy began with Russell’s rejection of Hegel’s critique (via Bradley) of analysis. It is historically significant because it situates analytic philosophy within the larger context of the history of Western philosophy. Specifically, we want to retain the expression in order to identify the set of ideas that characterize the mind set or cultural phenomena under discussion. What we should not lose sight of is that it is not the expression `analytic philosophy’ which is at issue but the set of ideas behind the expression. Despite the self-ascribed heroic image of academics and intellectuals as people who thrive on challenging old ideas and exploring new ones, the stubborn fact is that few if any of us enjoys altering our basic views. Clearly those who want to avoid the consequences of this argument will suggest that perhaps a terminological revision is all that is involved. They will ask whether so much fuss should be made over the expression `analytic philosophy’, or what expression we might use instead of it, or whether it really matters what we call the cultural phenomena to which we are alluding. Hence, it is important to repeat that we are not debating the expression. Avoiding the expression would be of little value if the general model was not modified. It is the associated set of ideas that is at issue.
Charlton (1991).
See Hylton (1990b).
This description of a scientific community is freely borrowed from Kuhn (1962). Resnick (1981): “... let me propose some properties of analytic philosophy... the emulation of science...the introduction of research programs....” (p. 86); Quine (1979): “A striking trait of scientific philosophy... an intrusion of technical terms and symbols which tends to estrange lay readers. But in their field they serve investigators as well as technical terms do in other areas”; Passmore (1985): “now philosophers prefer to think of themselves as quasi-scientists, collaborating in a research programme” (p. viii). The adoption of the self-image of being a scientist can be seen in little ways as well. Professional philosophers, like scientists, hold congresses, tend to publish articles in journals rather than publish books, are accorded status on the basis of specific articles; books usually turn out to be collections of previously published articles. Even the choice of examples reflects the imagery of science, including the use of science fiction. “Vienna positivism... demanded technical competence on the part of its practitioners and was intolerant of inexact thinking and expression;.. technical competence in logic and mathematics and great interest and reasonable competence in one or more of the sciences” Turnbull (1979), p. 26. “A striking trait of scientific philosophy in subsequent years [after Frege] has been the use, increasingly, of the powerful new logic. This has made for a deepening of insights and a sharpening of problems and solutions. It has made also for an intrusion of technical terms and symbols which tends to estrange lay readers. But in their field they serve investigators as well as technical terms do in other areas” Quine (1979).
There are]... special qualifications which analytic philosophers can bring to the clarification of public issues“ Perry (1986), p. xiii.
Carnap (1967a), pp. xvi-xvii.
Characteristically, human enquiry proceeds instead, at these explanatory levels, by the invention and investigation of a new hypothesis as anomalies begin to threaten the one currently accepted or entertained“ Cohen (1986), p. 6. ”Deeper theoretical understanding comes from the discovery of underlying unity amid superficial diversity. No one would deny the truth of this for scientific progress. But (as already suggested... )it is equally true of philosophical progress“ Ibid,p. 123.
Very often the kinds of individuals cited are religious philosophers who move freely within the analytic conversation. In response, we note that there has been a long tradition of acceptance of a positivist conception of science by deeply religious thinkers. These thinkers are happy to accept positivism precisely because of its limitations since such limitations provide the opening for their own theistic (realist) views. Hence, these religious philosophers do not subscribe to scientism, but they are content to permit exploratory thinking to become dominant in philosophical discussions.
We have claimed that analytic philosophy is the dominant movement in the Anglo-American professional philosophical community. This does not mean, sociologically, that every prominent professional philosopher subscribes to analytic philosophy. That is, the reader must not confuse `analytic philosophy’ with the ‘establishment’. There is a great overlap but not an identity. It is important to make this distinction lest someone come to believe that the presence of non-analytic philosophers in the establishment constitutes evidence against the claim that there is a powerful analytical movement.
The `establishment’ consists (minimally) of those (a) who subscribe to the paradigm and articulate and defend it, (b) those who raise objections to particular `analytic’ positions but within the paradigm, c0 those who go along with the domination of the analytic movement in order to advance their careers although privately decrying the dominance, (d) and, most especially, those who claim to have transcended `analytic philosophy’ but have only restated it in a new idiom (i.e., they reformulate all the objections into a new version of how everything is hypothesis formation).
Putnam (1985) : “Analytic philosophy has great accomplishments, to be sure; but those accomplishments are negative. Like logical positivism (itself just one species of analytic philosophy), analytic philosophy has succeeded in destroying the very problem with which it started. Each of the efforts to solve that problem, or even to say exactly what would count as a solution to that problem, has failed.... But analytic philosophy pretends today not to be just one great movement in the history of philosophy -which it certainly was - but to be philosophy itself. This self-description forces analytic philosophers ... to keep coming up with new `solutions’ . .. solutions which become more and more bizarre, and which have lost all interest outside of the philosophical community. Thus we have a paradox: at the very moment when analytical philosophy is recognized as the `dominant movement’ in world philosophy, analytical philosophy has come to the end of its own project - the dead end, not the completion” (p. 28). The negative accomplishment was to show in great technical detail that the problem of “how words hook onto the world” does not admit of a solution, and that rationality in science or in ethics does not consist in the possession of a formal method for appraisal and adjudication.
Failure to deal adequately with self-reference can be seen technically in Russell’s Theory of Types, in the uneasiness with the philosophical implications of Gödel’s proof, in Kripke’s contention that Quine’s denial of the semantic enterprise is itself a semantic enterprise, and the perennial preoccupation with the Liar paradox.
Cohen (1986), p. 2. See also Charlton (1991): “... my strategy will be to dive into the discussion myself and try to obtain some worthwhile results” (p. 4).
Scientists and writers on science have drawn analogies between the constructs of scientists and the creation of a work of art which, in an important sense, is also the exploration of a model. The analogy between science and art on the one hand and analytic philosophy on the other has been noted in the concluding section of Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations. We would suggest, on the contrary, that the analogy between philosophy and art is a symptom of decadence
Charlton (1991): “They [analytic philosophers] pride themselves on their individualism, on each developing his own or her own views” (p. 4).
philosophical scholarship, that valuable activity of a good many professionals who produce original analyses or constructions only as a byproduct of their interpretation of past thinkers. (To be sure, some good historical scholars are also creative thinkers who take part in present-day debates)“ Perry (1986), p. xv. Italics mine
On this basis Quine and Kripke are greater philosophers than Rawls and Nozick. It is also the case that Bas Van Fraasen is a better philosopher than Rawls because although Rawls is a super star axiologist and although Van Fraasen is a good logician but not a super star, good logicians are better than any axiologists.
So, for example, in the history of philosophy Jonathan Bennett is considered a “better” philosopher than Margaret Wilson because Bennett explores hypotheses within his historical work as well as in strictly epistemological debates.
For a different perspective on the adversarial nature of analytic philosophical debate see Harding and Hintikka (1983).
the progress of science is bound up with this liberal faith. Yet from the premiss that science owes no allegiance to any type of dictator some scientists may have concluded, falsely as I believe, that science is autonomous in the sense that its nature is undetermined by any relation to practice. But the conviction that science should be free from religion or politics is a moral conviction“ Mure (1958), p . 36.
Although analytic philosophers are among the first to decry ad hominem attacks and the reference to background material they consider a reflection of the genetic fallacy, there has been a persistent use of both ad hominem and assertions that appear to be examples of the so-called genetic fallacy in the analytic literature that attacks Heidegger. Heidegger’s membership in the Nazi party is sometimes mentioned as if this fact alone not only undermines all of Heidegger’s philosophy but undermines all criticism of analytic philosophy. Popper (1983) has spoken of the “demand for an irrational and anti-rational philosophical messianism a la Heidegger” p. 177. “. . . Martin Heidegger, who was a pupil of Husserl, and by an opportune adherence to the Nazi party supplanted him in his Chair at Freiburg....” Ayer (1982), p. 226. “. . . positivist philosophers fled or were driven from the area of Nazi control, whereas their value-laden antagonists, including Heidegger, stayed put, and mum” Nozick (1981), p. 749 n32. “Some leading Continental philosophers like Heidegger compromised with the Nazis, and it is hard to doubt that some Nazis drew support for their ideas from the writings which still strongly influence Continental philosophy, the writings of Nietzsche; on the other hand, many of the German and Austrian philosophers who emigrated to English-speaking countries shared Russell’s taste for empiricism and formal logic” Charlton (1991), p. 3.
Russell is distinguished from other seekers after absolute certainty chiefly by the ingenuity of his constructions and by the candor with which he admits the failures of the quest“ Alston (1967b), vol. 7, p. 244. ”Even if it were decided eventually that none of Chomsky’s work on generative grammar was of any direct relevance to the description of natural languages, it would still be judged valuable by logicians and mathematicians, who are concerned with the construction and study of formal systems independently of their empirical application“ Lyons (1970), p. 139.
Ruth Barcan Marcus, as quoted in the New York Times,Tuesday, December 29, 1987, p. A 15.
A very different view is expressed by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigation (sec. 88): “No single ideal of exactness has been laid down; we do not know what we should be supposed to imagine under this head.”
Romanos (1983), p. 157.
In 1914, during his visit to Harvard University, Bertrand Russell had the following to say about the work of Ralph Barton Perry, George Santayana, and Josiah Royce: “Everybody is kind, many are intelligent along the narrow lines of their work, and most are virtuous - but none have any quality ” (Letter of March 19, 1914 ).
The persistent hostility to Continental thought, especially toward Heidegger, is partly a reflection of Heidegger’s critique of scientism and realism as well as warnings about technology. Dummett reports (1978) that when he was a student “Heidegger was perceived only as a figure of fun, too absurd to be taken seriously as a threat to the kind of philosophy practised in Oxford” (p. 437).
Paul Kuntz relates a conversation in which after his expression of sympathy with Richard Popkin’s interest in Kierkegaard’s existentialism and in the Jewish heritage of Western Thought, Gustav Bergmann replied “Dick knows less philosophy than the janitor.” When Kuntz then proceeded to write out his objections to Bergmann’s remarks, Bergmann suggested “Why don’t you get out of philosophy?”
See Gildin (1975), pp. xiii-xvi for Strauss on Nagel. See Strauss (1953), pp. 9–34 and (1959), pp. 56–77.
Russell’s recognition that his thought about the nature of logic was bankrupt: his old view will no longer work, he has nothing to take its place, and yet his work crucially depends on logic having some kind of special philosophical status. Under these circumstances he clutches at the word `tautology’, hoping, perhaps, that Wittgenstein will emerge from the trenches with a definition of the word which will enable it to play the role that Russell needs it for“ Hylton (1990b), p. 165.
Davidsonic boom’: “the sound made by a research programme when it hits Oxford. And it was indeed an extraordinary phenomenon. Suddenly in the mid-seventies, Donald Davidson became (as they say) a superstar.... Cynics might note that Davidson’s output had just the characteristics that would encourage a certain cult status. For a start, the published corpus was widely scattered and wasn’t always easy to get hold of. Bootleg xeroxes of unpublished work were also in circulation. So there was the teasing initiation rite of tracking down the stuff. But once acquired, the papers made an attractively small pile of typically rather short pieces–no Dummettian tomes to get through. The graduate student was thus made to feel that he could wade into the thick of things without having to do very much homework first: there was no need to engage with recalcitrant historical texts, no need to know anything of science or mathematics, even no need to know much serious logic (since Davidsonians told us that standard first order logic was all we needed). Most importantly, the papers had an enticing dual aspect. At one level, there were tidy analytic claims of a regular kind about, e.g., the logical form of indirect speech, or about the argument that reasons are not causes. These analyses were undoubtedly clever, but comfortingly familiar in style, the sort of thing any good student knows how to tackle: but at another level, it was suggested that the particular analyses subserved and illustrated some much more general programmatic claims–Big Ideas (about truth, reality and the mind) were at stake. And Davidson had caught something of Quine’s style, combining great superficial clarity with an occasional elusiveness on key questions -providing ideal material, then, for graduate seminars, which could argue themselves into the ground trying to pin down the Big Ideas. Not entirely surprising, therefore, that Davidson should have been a big hit.... The reverberations from that Davidsonic boom have died away.... The bandwagons have rolled on elsewhere... ” P. Smith (1991) pp. 280–81.
Bas C. van Fraassen, Against Naturalized Empiricism unpublished paper presented at the Quine Conference, San Marino, May, 1990.
According to Gutting (1982), Kripke, Goodman, Plantinga and Rawls, for example, all appeal to intuition so that there is “very little basis for the view that philosophers are able to establish their claims by rational argumentation” (p. 326 ).
Carnap (1963), p. 55.
The existence of a tradition of a model of coercive argumentation is sensitively acknowledged and, in principle, rejected by Nozick (1981) in the introduction to his book. However, Nozick (1) does not discuss the history of that model or identify specific practitioners; (2) substitutes for it what we have called the exploration model; and (3) still leaves us with the suggestion that “the philosopher’s existential hypothesis may suggest detailed investigations to the scientist ... ” (p. 13).
Charlton (1991) claims that analytic philosophy “. . . hardly defines itself at all” (p. 4) and that “... there is no set of doctrines analytical philosophers ... hold in unison . . .” (Ibid.) but that “. . . they have a consensus about what is and what is not a satisfactory treatment of a topic. They also have some agreement... about what topics are fit for philosophical treatment.” (Ibid) What are these topics? Charlton claims that “. . . history reveals a single philosophical tradition...” (p. 11); and that “. . . a central task of philosophy [is] to say how it is that our thoughts and speeches relate to the world and are true or false” (p. 20) What Charlton is saying without realizing it is that analytic philosophers have imposed upon the history of philosophy a paradigm, namely the paradigm of epistemological realism, so that they do not have to see themselves as a movement dealing with a particular set of problems in a particular way because of their own commitments, and therefore do not have to give an account of why those commitments should be taken seriously
Between 1979 and 1990, a political battle was waged in the American Philosophical Association between the analytic establishment and a loose opposition movement called pluralism. See the New York Times, Tuesday, December 29, 1987, p 1. Given what we have said in the text of this book, that is, given the difficulties we have enumerated in arriving at a consensus, it is not surprising that a consensus even within analytic philosophy has to be created politically. Moreover, if philosophy as “a” science requires the existence of creative geniuses who achieve star status by articulating hypotheses that define all legitimate present work and future research in the discipline, then the only sure sign of occupying this role is political domination of the professional association, its journals, and its major graduate schools.
My analysis is heavily influenced by the views of Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses (specifically the analysis of mass man); Michael Oakeshott in “Rationalism in Politics;” Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind Martin Heidegger’s discussion of technology; and William Barrett’s The Illusion of Technique
We have maintained that it does not seem possible for human beings to exist without some conception of their past. Hence, even in a culture which thinks of itself as liberated from its traditions, there is a mythological historical account of how it has emancipated itself from its past. Any such historical account, beside being inaccurate or distorted, is either logically incoherent or presupposes unexamined metaphysical premises about the relation of past, present, and future.
even if our success to date has been modest, that does not show we ought to quit. Where would physics be if Galileo, Newton, and Einstein had yielded to such reasoning?“ Sosa (1987), p. 711.
The present book is not and will not offer such a hypothesis. This book is an attempt to explicate analytic philosophy with special reference to the Enlightenment Project.
Substantive analytical philosophy has often occupied itself with a search for hitherto unnoticed presuppositions or implications, and so there is no reason why analytical metaphilosophy should not do likewise“ Cohen (1986), p. 12.
science, which in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was the most powerful of weapons against obscurantism and tyranny, became the dominant superstition of the twentieth“ Mure (1958), p. 37 n1.
There may be an important parallel here with the prevalence of pure formalism in art, a formalism which eschews issues of meaning and thinks that art is either structure or something that gives pleasure.
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Capaldi, N. (1998). Beyond The Enlightenment Project. In: The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3300-7_13
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