When will the progress of analytical philosophy be defended without propaganda?

Frege’s article had a galvanizing effect on such philosophers as Bertrand Russell. When the young Russell arrived as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890, philosophy was dominated by the ponderous metaphysics of German idealism, which pounded out propositions purporting to delve into the murky and nebulous features of “the Absolute.” An older Russell once reminisced that he had thought of language as transparent, the medium of thought that could simply be taken for granted. Frege demonstrated otherwise. Instead of trusting language to transport one into intimacy with the Absolute, it might be good to first discover how language manages to do more basic things, in the manner of Frege. Modern philosophy of language and analytic philosophy were both born in this same technical turn taken by philosophy. "What Philosophers Really Know" by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (October 8, 2015, New York Times), reviewing Philosophy of Language: The Classics Explained by Colin McGinn. {HT Liam Kofi Bright & Jason Stanley}

After the string of (self-inflicted) bad press received by Colin McGinn's teaching style and recent academic publications, it's nice to be reminded of some of his academic virtues in Goldsteins review ("McGinn has succeeded brilliantly in demonstrating the substantive progress made in philosophy of language.") The review itself is a pleasure to read and makes useful distinctions among, "philosophy of language," "the linguistic turn," and "ordinary language philosophy," that should help the public better understand analytical philosophy's practices and history. Yet the review is framed as a robust defense of the "cumulative progress of" analytical philosophy. And here the review manages, despite astute observations (as regular readers know, I like her resistance to the idea that consensus is constitutive of expertise), to turn into clownish propaganda.

There are four sure ways of recognizing one is in the realm of analytical propaganda: (i) the origin myths of the rebellion against British Idealism contain obvious blunders: (ii) analytical philosophy's progress contains neither Kuhn loss nor other problems; (iii) obligatory mention of Heidegger as bad guy; (iv) the role of ethics in analytical philosophy's birth is systematically effaced.

On (i): above, I quoted the treatment of British Idealism and Russell. Russell did not attribute to the British Idealists the idea that language could be transparent; it was the view that the youthful Russell entertained himself while writing one of the masterpieces of early analytical philosophy, The Principles of Mathematics. ( Peter Hylton has made the point in print.) His later self, perhaps influenced by the encounter with Wittgenstein's writing, saw the error of his earlier analytical ways! I am no specialist of British Idealism, but I would be amazed if they held something like the transparency of language thesis. They held, rather, (in Bradley's hands) that language was something to be left behind in (the ascent toward) the Absolute (a view shared with folk like Plato and Spinoza and several other early modernists).

Goldstein's treatment of the origin of analytical philosophy, which was undoubtedly common when she was a PhD student, is especially cringe-worthy because it provides a dated view of what's going on in (ahh) the best analytical departments. Here I don't just mean the work by historians of analytical philosophy, but rather the work by metaphysicians like Jonathan Schaffer (in a famous paper) and Michael Della Rocca (in one of my favorite papers), who have returned with a confident and self-critical eye toward the origin myths of analytical philosophy. They show that today we can reflect on the history of analytical philosophy without anxiety.

On (iv): at one point Goldstein writes, "Analytic philosophy originated with philosophers who also did seminal work in mathematical logic, most notably Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, and the alliances with both formal logic and science are among its defining features." She then goes on to offer the gratuitous and obligatory dismissal of Heidegger ((indeed he is coupled, en passant, with "Slavoj Žižek") thus covering (ii)). Goldstein's position makes sense of the self-conception of analytical philosophy as advanced during the early Cold War by influential disciples of the first generation of logical positivism and culminated in Dummett's efforts to turn Frege into the true founder of analytical philosophy. This story effaces the role of one of the founders, G.E. Moore, whose reputation rested and rests, in part, on his work in ethics not logic.

There are two further problems in this narrative: first, by joining analytical philosophy into an "alliance" with science, Goldstein quietly glides over Wittgenstein's philosophical hostility to natural science. It also misses, say, the role of analytical philosophy's practice as friendly critic to science's public roles as manifested in the wonderful work by the second generation analytical philosopher, Stebbing, who is generating more interest both among those who care about analytical philosophy as public philosophy and the nature of responsible speech/propaganda as well as those who wish to recover the roots of metaphysical analysis.

But, more subtly, second, Goldstein's picture completely leaves Sidgwick's role in the origins of analytical philosophy out of the story.* By this I do not merely mean that Rawls, Parfit, Singer (et al) are in (ongoing) conversation with Sidgwick; rather, I also mean that the Cambridge side of analytical philosophy originates in the circle around Sidgwick and students who were preoccupied with a whole range of problems (besides ethics, logic, and linguistic philosophy), including, political economy, philosophy of science, probability, etc. In my view this story has not been fully told yet, but would include, in addition to the names already mentioned, also Ramsey, W.E. Johnson, Broad, and Keynes father and son.

Finally, all change, even the progressive, "technical" ones, can entail losses ("progress" and "technical" are repeated like a mantra in the review). Goldstein wisely (and correctly) places analytical philosophy's progress "more in the discovery of questions, which often includes the discovery of the largeness lurking within seemingly small questions." But she does not reflect on the fact that during this progress some questions may have become harder to ask+ and other worthy questions were regularly overlooked (if not mocked); in closing her review, Goldstein recognizes that there remain questions of enduring interest "not limited to philosophers," but fails to reflect on our tradition's repeated willingness to pretend that the most profound are not really philosophy.
 

 

 

*I have also argued that Boole's work already has many of characteristic hallmarks of analytical philosophy, but I recognize that my position is controversial.

+ I have struggled to articulate (to adopt Tarski's terminology) a non-classical conception of truth that I discern in Spinoza.

Comments

[Tom Hurka]

I agree entirely about Sidgwick. The Methods of Ethics is a work written in a recognizably analytic style decades before Russell and Moore, both of whom Sidgwick of course taught. And he was a metaphysical realist who opposed Idealism decades before Russell and Moore. Those who think logic, philosophy of language, and m & e are the "core" of philosophy have wanted to tell a story in which analytic philosophy originated in those parts of the discipline. But it didn't. It got going much earlier, in ethics.

[Aaron Garrett]

This is an excellent post and I strongly third your point about Sidgwick. There's also a great deal of continuity between Sidgwick and Butler, or at least Sidgwick thought so.

[Anne Siegetsleitner]

In a similar vein, I undertake a revision of the prevailing view on the role and conception of ethics and morality in the Vienna Circle in my habilitation thesis ("Ethik und Moral im Wiener Kreis. Zur Geschichte eines engagierten Humanismus", open access, e.g. on philpapers or at www.siegetsleitner.net) I reject this view as being too partial and undifferentiated and disprove the opinion that the members of the Vienna Circle were uninterested in ethics and morality. The monograph treats the ethical main topics and positions of the members of the Vienna Circle as those developed in the respective personal and cultural contexts. There is a lot to be rediscovered and reconsidered.

[Schliesser, Eric]

We agree, Anne. I hope your Habilitation gets wider uptake. In my post I was careful to speak of "disciples" and not the members of the Vienna Circle themselves. (I am familiar with Schlick's ethical writings and have blogged a bit about Carnap's moral's vision.)