Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a range of philosophical methods that came to prominence during the Twentieth Century. Analytic philosophy emphasises conceptual analysis in order to dispel philosophical problems. Characteristically it rejects sweeping philosophical systems in favour of close attention to detail.
At the turn of the last century the English philosophers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore used close conceptual analysis in a concerted critique of the then-dominant forms of Idealism. Their approach was re-enforced by the movement of continental philosophers into English-speaking countries in the first half of the century. Analytic philosophy subsequently took various paths, including a rejection of formal analysis in favour of a close examination of natural language and an inquiry into the logical underpinnings of languages and renewed interest in the ethical implications of analytic method . Most recently there has been a great widening of the breadth of analytic investigation, to the extent that it is difficult to see where analytic philosophy ends and anything else begins.
Relation to continental philosophy
The term "continental philosophy" is used to contrast analytic philosophy with philosophy in continental Europe. This is a somewhat problematic juxtaposition, since it contrasts a philosophical method, analytic philosophy, against a region, continental Europe.
Some commentators have instead contrasted continental philosophy with Anglophone or anglo-american philosophy. But this distinction is also misleading, since analytic philosophy's founding fathers, Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, the Logical Positivists (the Vienna Circle), the Logical Empiricists (in Berlin), and the Polish logicians were all from the continent of Europe. The early work of Moore and Russell was primarily a critique of British Idealism.
The European Society for Analytic Philosophy [1] holds continental-wide conventions every third year. It claims that analytic philosophy is practiced in most countries in Europe, and it claims that:
However convenient the opposition between 'Analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy may be, it is inadequate, for there are analytic philosophers on the Continent, and the values and aspirations of analytic philosophy are (meant to be) universal.
Formalism and natural languages
Part of analytic approach is the clarification of philosophical problems by examining the language used to express them. Two major threads weave through this tradition: formalism and natural language.
The former seeks to understand language, and hence philosophical problems, by making use of formal logic. That is, in one way or another it seeks to formalize the way in which philosophical statements are made. This has led to a number of successes, including Symbolic logic, recognizing the primary importance of sense and reference in the construction of meaning, Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions, Karl Popper's theory of falsificationism and Alfred Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth.
The other thread seeks to understand philosophical ideas by a close and careful examination of the natural language used to express them – usually with some emphasis on the importance of common sense in dealing with difficult concepts.
These two threads intertwine, sometimes implacably opposed to each other, sometimes virtually identical. Famously, Wittgenstein started out in the formalism camp, but ended up in the natural language camp.
Formalism
Logical atomism
Analytic philosophy has its origins in Gottlob Frege’s development of predicate logic. This permitted a much wider range of sentences to be parsed into logical form. Bertrand Russell adopted it as his primary philosophical tool; a tool he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word “is” can be parsed in three distinct ways:
- in 'the cat is asleep: the is of predication says that 'x is P': P(x)
- in 'there is a cat”: the is of existence says that there is an x: ∃(x)
- in 'three is half of six': the is of identity says that x is the same as y: x=y
Russell sought to resolve various philosophical issues by applying such clear and clean distinctions, most famously in the case of the Present King of France.
The Tractatus
As a young Austrian soldier, Ludwig Wittgenstein expanded and developed Russell's logical atomism into a comprehensive system in a brief book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The world is the existence of certain states of affairs; these states of affairs can be expressed in the language of first-order predicate logic. So a picture of the world can be built up by expressing atomic facts in atomic propositions, and linking them using logical operators.
One of the central movements within analytic philosophy is linked closely to the following statement from the Tractatus:
- 5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
This attitude is one of the reasons for the close relationship between philosophy of language and analytic philosophy. Language, on this view is the principal—or perhaps the only—tool of the philosopher. For Wittgenstein, and many other analytic philosophers, philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be used. The hope is that when language is used clearly, philosophical problems are found to dissolve. This view has come to be known as quietism.
Wittgenstein thought he had set out the 'final solution' to all philosophical problems, and so went off to become a school teacher. However, he later revisited the inadequacy of logical atomism, and further expanded the philosophy of language by his posthumous book Philosophical Investigations.
Natural language semantics
Davidson. Oxford in 1970s. Strawson, Dummett, McDowell, Evans.
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Natural language
Reaction against idealism
G. E. Moore, Common Sense philosophy. This philosophy is a rejection of British Post-Hegel Idealism.
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Ordinary language philosophy
Main article: Ordinary language philosophy
Oxford School. Associated with such philosophers as Austin, Ryle, Searle, and, as well, the later teachings of Wittgenstein.
Rather than viewing philosophical problems with respect to logic, ordinary language philosophy sets forth the notion of consideration with respect to the ordinary usage of the linguistic terms germane to such problems. While schools such as logical positivism focus on logical terms, supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. It may be argued, then, that ordinary language philosophy is of a more sociological grounding, as it essentially focuses on the use of language within social contexts.
Ordinary language philosophy was often used to disperse philosophical problems, by exposing them as results of fundamental misunderstandings regarding the ordinary usage of the pertinent linguistic terms. Indeed, this is apparent in Ryle (who attempted to dispose of "Descartes' myth"), as well as Wittgenstein, among others.
Logical positivism and logical empiricism
Vienna Circle, Carnap, Verificationism. Analytic-synthetic distinction. Rejection of Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics. "Emotivism." Immigration of logicians and scientists from Europe in the 1930s. Philosophy of science. Quine, who attempted to dispose of the supposed Two Dogmas of Empiricism, and especially the analytic-synthetic distinction. Behaviorism.
See the separate article on Logical Positivism for further information.
Philosophy of mind and cognitive science
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Paul and Patricia Churchland, Dennett. See philosophy of mind or cognitive science for further information.
Ethics in analytic philosophy
As a side-effect of the focus on logic and language in the early years of analytic philosophy, the tradition initially had little to say on the subject of ethics. The attitude was widespread among early analytics that these subjects were unsystematic, and merely expressed personal attitudes about which philosophy could have little or nothing to say. Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, remarks that values cannot be a part of the world, and if they are anything at all they must be beyond or outside the world somehow, and that hence language, which describes the world, can say nothing about them. One interpretation of these remarks found expression in the doctrine of the logical positivists that statements about value--including all ethical and aesthetic judgments--are, like metaphysical claims, literally meaningless and therefore non-cognitive; that is, not able to be either true or false. Social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and various more specialied subjects like philosophy of history thus moved to the fringes of English-language philosophy for some time.
By the 1950s debates had begun to arise over whether--and if so, how--ethical statements really were non-cognitive. Stevenson argued for expressivism, R. M. Hare advocated a view called universal prescriptivism. Phillipa Foot contributed several essays attacking all these positions, and the collapse of logical positivism as a cohesive research programme led to a renewed interest in ethics.
Political philosophy
Current analytic political philosophy owes much to John Rawls, who, in a series of papers from the 1950s onward (most notably "Two Concepts of Rules" and "Justice as Fairness") and his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, produced a sophisticated and closely argued defence of a liberal welfare state. This was followed in short order by Rawls's colleague Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defence of free-market libertarianism.
Analytical Marxism
Another interesting development in the area of political philosophy has been the emergence of a school known as Analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply the techniques of analytic philosophy, along with tools of modern social science such as rational choice theory to the elucidation of the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best known member of this school, is Oxford University philosopher G.A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence is generally taken as representing the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen attempted to apply the tools of logical and linguistic analysis to the elucidation and defense of Marx's materialist conception of history. Other prominent Analytical Marxists include the economist John Roemer, the social scientist Jon Elster, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. All these people have attempted to build upon Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, like rational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical techniques, in the interpretation of Marxian theory.
Communitarianism
Communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel advance a critique of Liberalism that uses analytic techniques to isolate the key assumptions of Liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and then challenges these assumptions. In particular, Communitarians challenge the Liberal assumption that the individual can be viewed as fully autonomous from the community in which he lives and is brought up. Instead, they push for a conception of the individual that emphasises the role that the community plays in shaping his or her values, thought processes and opinions.
See also
External links
References
P. F. Strawson, Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford, 1992). Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford, 1990).
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