Genius and the Herd in Analytical Philosophy

In saying that analytic philosophy now has only a stylistic and sociological unity I, am not suggesting that analytic philosophy is a bad thing or that it is in bad shape. The analytic style is, I think, a good style, and the espirit de corps among analytic philosophers is healthy and useful. All I am saying is that analytic philosophy has become, whether it likes it or not, the same sort of discipline that we find in the other humanities departments--departments where pretensions to rigor and to scientific status are less evident. The normal form of life in the humanities is the same as that in the arts  and in belles lettres: a genius does something new and interesting and persuasive, and his or her admirers begin to form a school or movement....
Rather, we should relax and say, with our colleagues in history and literature, that we in the humanities differ from scientists precisely in not knowing in advance what our problems are, and in not needing to provide criteria of  identity that will tell us whether our problems are the same as those of our predecessors. To adopt this relaxed attitude is to let the institutional tail wag the pseudoscientific dog. It is to admit that our geniuses invent problems and programs de novo, rather than being presented with them by the subject matter itself or by the current state of research.--Richard Rorty (1982) "Philosophy in America Today" The American Scholar, 189.

Rorty assumes that the opposition between (a) a given-problem-solving discipline with extensive division of labor and (b) a herd-like-Genius-following discipline (with constantly invented new problems) is exhaustive (in Rorty Kripke is the exemplar of (b)). The analytic herd is, on this account, defined by an "argumentative" style, that turns us into "quasi-lawyers rather than quasi-scientists." (198)  On Rorty's approach this style is what distinguishes us from other folk that call themselves 'philosophers' and from other disciplines. While Rorty's own trajectory moved him away from this style, it seems he was happy to recommend it to others.

Rorty, then, sugests that philosophers should reconcile themselves (in the Kuhnian terms which he also uses) to permanent crisis or to being in a pre-paradigmatic stage with an "increasingly short half-lives of philosophical problems and programms." (198) As MacIntyre noted in his response to Rorty (recall yesterday's post), Rorty's position relies on a pseudo-history in which the Positivists turn out to be philosophy's last chance (to turn itself into a scientific paradigm).

As Williamson (2014) notes, Rorty ignores David Lewis, who was "Rorty’s colleague at Princeton since 1970;" thereby "Rorty’s radar had missed a serious threat, the central figure in analytic philosophy for the coming decades. Rorty was out of sympathy with most new wave philosophy of language, and the metaphysics that increasingly accompanied it," (33; in context, Williamson is discussing Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature. Recall my posts on Williamson's piece here , here, and here).

As an aside, Wiliamson's treatment of Lewis is respectful on Lewis's professional achievement, but also includes this odd sketch:

The central, most influential figure in the development of analytic metaphysics over the final quarter of the twentieth century, and the contemporary philosopher most cited within recent analytic philosophy, is undoubtedly David Lewis, also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and beard from another era (by contrast with ‘the ghost in the machine’, Gilbert Ryle’s summary description of the immaterial Cartesian ego in the clockwork Cartesian body).

Perhaps that passes as funny in Oxford?

 

Be that as it may David Lewis’s system with its peculiar and original mixture of modularity and systematicity generated, as the Healy data showed, a kind of cohesion for a considerable chunk of analytical philosophy. The cohesion is not complete (recall this post, and also this one), and as Rorty already recognizes, for example, A Theory of Justice does not fit this larger cohesion; in fact, it (TJ) "is not a triumph of analytic philosophizing. It is simply the best update of liberal social thought that we have." (188; Rorty ignores the fact that Nozick's Anarchy is more clearly a work of analytical philosophy.)

 

However, it is now likely that analytical ideology studies (recall) and analytical existentialism will in this Lewisian-era, link (to quote Rorty!) "the so-called central areas of philosophy"  to "moral and social philosophy." (188)  And I expect that before long that developments in analytic ideology studies and existentialism will drive technical results in formerly 'core' areas.

David Lewis’s system with its peculiar and original mixture of modularity and systematicity generated, as the Healy data showed, a new kind of cohesion for a considerable chunk of analytical philosophy. The cohesion is not complete (recall this post, and also this one). - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/#sthash.9cfulkk6.dpuf

 

Our Lewisian-era also offers us an alternative option to the ones on offer by Rorty [recall: (a) a given-problem-solving discipline with extensive division of labor and (b) a herd-like-Genius-following discipline]. In his writings, Lewis, who did not pretend to excessive modesty, himself eschewed the great-man approach, and (in Australia) he found interlocutors (e.g. Armstrong) that facilitated the presentation, if not development, of his own views. In doing so, he did not put himself above criticism, and he developed his own views along the way.

 

In Rawls and Lewis, then, analytical philosophy of the 1970s (and the decades thereafter) spawned two wildly successful schools in which the founder is open to criticism (and is not conceived as a Genius-legislator; by contrast, Cavell flirts much closer to such a magisterial approach). But the difference between the two schools is also notable: the Rawlsian school has considerable cohesion on doctrinal matters (and its conception of the history of philosophy), whereas in the Lewisian school, respecting the modularity of the 'system,' Lewis's individual papers (and books) are key reference points for discussions, but few people working in it treat any of it as dogma. (If there is consensus it is not over doctrinal matters.) The lack of such dogmas allows new ideas and even new methods to be assimilated along the way (this sponge-like ability has always been characteristic of the best of analytic philosophy).

 

In conclusion, the Lewisian school should also be contrasted with the original mold of scientific philosophy with an intellectual division of labor that makes progress on technical questions from a settled core [Rorty's (a)]. While undoubtedly some Lewisian elements can be found in and assimilated by some such programs (e.g., Williamson's modal logic as metaphysics), it is, in practice, distinct from these.  That is to say, in addition to genius/herd & the we-are-all-workerbees models,* non-reverential schools (that do not exhaust the possibility space) are also possible within analytical philosophy. There is, in fact, nothing to prevent the existence of such schools alongside each other. while I doubt I could self-identify with a school, I think such a possibility is a good thing.

*I thank WIlliam Friday Dark for discussion on Facebook.