In opposition to Analytic Philosophy

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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This is a post to a blog at definitionofphilosophy.com and I wanted to see what members here might think about it. Full copyright to John Emerson, the author. The blog follows below.

“It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me ?……

He holds him with his skinny hand,
‘There was a ship,’ quoth he.
‘Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon !’….
(Coleridge, “The Ancient Mariner”)

“I alone have escaped to tell thee. “
(Job 1:19)

When I attack analytic philosophy, a very common response is bafflement: why do I dislike it so much, and just what it is that I would prefer? I have recently come to understand that this bafflement is sincere and real, and that no one younger than forty-five or so can remember a time when analytic philosophy was not dominant. Even by the time of my own undergraduate years (1964-7) the kind of thing I wanted to see was being phased out, and by now I am effectively a fossil. This post is my attempt to clarify my objections to analytic philosophy, and to sketch what it is that I would have wanted.

I think that it is agreed that analytic philosophy descends from Frege, and the short way of expressing my dissatisfaction is to say that Fregean philosophy does some of the things philosophy used to do much better than any earlier philosophy did, but at the cost of ceasing entirely to do some of the other things that philosophy used to do. Analytic philosophers speak with condescension and scorn of anyone who regrets the loss of the old “big picture” philosophy, but I think that their condescension and scorn are not justified and, in fact, justify my own low opinion of them.

By and large the problems I see in analytic philosophy come from the attempt to make philosophy into a scientific, technical, professional activity. In particular, I think that the standards of truth and clarity, the general bias toward analysis as opposed to synthesis, and the skittishness about “thick” or mixed discourse have played a malicious role. The philosophy I would prefer would be more inclusive and more enterprising, but less certainly true, and in this would resemble the pre-Fregean philosophies.

I’ve put my criticisms / proposals in four categories, which I will just sketch. By and large, my criticisms are especially of analytic philosophy’s approaches to social, political, historical, ethical, and other “humanistic” questions, though I suspect that the analytic philosophy of science is dubious too.

First, I think that at least some philosophers should reverse the priority that analytic philosophers give to rigor over comprehensiveness. Rather than reducing problems to a size which can be successfully handled with rigor and certainty, I think that philosophers should try as best possible to handle large questions in their entirety. And these should be actual, real questions in all their thickness, and not questions about formalized models or imaginary hypothetical questions.

Second, if questions have both a normative (political or ethical) and a factual component, as most do, both components should be discussed together, rather than simplifying them by the “bracketing-out” process, and assigning the separate parts to the respective specialists.

Third, discussions should be oriented both to persuasion and to truth, and this means, to a degree, the renunciation of expert professionalism. The kinds of philosophical questions I’m talking about are of very general concern, and to treat them as specialized subjects not accessible to laymen has not only the disadvantage of elitism or even authoritarianism, but also that of presumption. The technical devices by which philosophers exclude laymen from their discussions have the effect of excluding very intelligent, concerned
non-philosophers from the argument. There are reasons why fluid dynamics, for example, should be a specialized topic, but ethics and politics should not be. (To put it differently: philosophy can be as
difficult as it wishes, but it cannot intentionally reserve itself for professional philosophers alone. And yes, Kant and Hegel were more accessible than contemporary philosophy is, because they did deign to address “the things that matter in [people’s] little lives”. )

Finally, philosophy should be constructive, and for that reason cannot be truth-functional. Every writer and every reader faces an uncertain future which can be influenced by his or her actions. Comprehensive
philosophies are by nature, and absolutely should be, constructive proposals or projects about how we should make our futures. And proposals and projects cannot be true, but can only be constrained by truth.

All past philosophies exaggerated their claims to truth, and the Fregean critique was a powerful one. But Fregean philosophy cannot produce a thick, constructive, persuasive, comprehensive world view,
and has thus renounced one of the functions of philosophy. Not all analytic philosophers fail on all four of the counts I have listed, but as far as I know they all fail on at least one of them. In effect, the philosophy profession has delegated some of the most important traditional functions of philosophy to journalists, freelancers, politicians, administrators, and charlatans.

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I agree that professional philosophy can take the use of logical analysis too far - making it an end in itself rather than a tool. I do not agree that this trend is anything like prevalent among current philosophers. I think he’s crying over nothing - or, rather, overstating his case.

I have seen some ridiculous journal articles, full of jargon and crap, however. But this is not so new. Kant started it.

I like to blame Kant for as much as possible.

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A good reference book on this matter is “After Philosophy: End or Transition?”, edited by Baynes, et. al. It should be required reading for anyone attempting to understand the analytic vs empirical debates in contemporary philosophy.

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Fair enough, but this is rather more about the analytic vs continental, or, analytic vs. pre-analytic philosophy, or fregian philosophy vs philosophy sans frege. Thanks for comments so far… will add my own eventually.

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obw, i am delighted to say that i could not agree with you more. although a grounding in analytic philosophy can lay the bedrock for a more profound understanding of the subject, it is by no means the be-all and end-all. its focus on rigour and logic as the guidants towards truth is close-minded in the extreme: since when were hearts inspired or worlds changed through the modus ponens or the breakdown of definitions? i am sure that the philosophy of the future, if it will aspire to be an important one (as i deeply hope it will), will have to break free of the constraints of this misguidedly over-technical practice.

here is a quote from my friend and employer, the philosopher A.C. Grayling:

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I’m very much on the creative/continental side of things BUT I’m really looking forward to starting into logic in me course in UCD-
next year, next year !
Probably doing the whole thing the wrong way round!!

I was also wondering would a bit of set theory be helpful in getting to grips or, at least, getting a basic understanding of analytic philosophy - I have a friend who’s a maths fanatic and says he’ll give me cheap grinds
(and If anyone knows of a cheap book - or an internet intro to set theory past it on…)

Mind you I’m crap at maths so I fear any introduction to logic may be short and not so sweet!

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Analytical Philosophy has dominated because the other kinds continually lack funding, and seem too frivalous to students, politicians and leaders of industry. An analytic philosopher CAN actually have something of an extended conversation with a scientist, economist, etc., and if we ever make it to a Borg-like state, the Analytics will surely have had something to do with it.

War, terrorism, and a battle of competing authoritative poetries (religions) may call for a widespread revival of, I won’t say Continentalism, per se, but certainly the more down-to-earth approach of some of AC Grayling’s more accesible essays - the kind of thing only a philosopher could write, but that everybody regardless of background could understand, and learn from, upon first reading. In a way Trevor’s post is ironically apropos - philiosophers like Grayling, who can adeptly navigate the densist passages of Wittgenstein, are also by nature and discipline superbly adept at dusting off and serving up common sense notions of “kindness,” “charity,” and “love,” and “what is a man?” from a philosophical perspective that is neither overly-emotional (poetry) nor cold (analytic) - but constructive (perennial?). Russell was good at this, too. Grayling and Russell are why I came here originally, and Obw’s post is similar to what I said to whitelotus three years ago.

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Obw

The phrase “synthetic philosophy” is perhaps a viable candidate for replacing “continental philosophy” - though one should remember that there is a third category of sorts - including so-called “post-metaphysicians” and “post-philosophers” such as Richard Rorty. Some continental philosophers belong to this group, rather than the “synthetic” one.

In any case, take a look at two papers from this website;

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/williams/

The first one to take a look at is the one on Deleuze and Lewis. It is a good way to get a sense for the difference between contemporary “analytic” and “synthetic” approaches. The second paper to look at is the one which deals with the categories of explanation in Whitehead’s Process and Reality. Whitehead is another good example of a “synthetic philosopher”. You will see that some of the themes discussed in this paper are similar to those in the blog posted in this thread.

Regards,

James

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HERE HERE =D> and buy the lad a drink!

The worrying thing, for me, is just how “far out” either wing is from the other. On one side you have things like the journal of mathematical philosophy - impenetrable equations only understood by fifty or sixty people and, on the other, SOME of the post structuralist stuff as exposed by Sokal is complete nonsense - misapplying scientific terms outside their field AND completely mis understanding them in the first place.

(physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/tr … efile.html)
(physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/)

(I’d agree with James on Deleuze being a highly interesting philosopher - especially the early stuff)

Any way I have to say the original article as an argument for “classical” philosophy that’s internally coherent but also attempts to argue its position passionately and address it self to the real world situation of any reasonable reader makes a hell of a lot of sense

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This may apply.
Article, “The Absolute”, by H.B. Acton, “The Encyclopedia of Philosophy”,MacMillan, etc., 1967. Quote–
“Schelling continued Kant’s error of locating freedom outside the only world in which is it of importance, the world in which individual men decide and act. The view of Absolute Idealists is, however, that this world is merely phenomenal and must be contrasted with an infinite reality that contains it.”
That about sums it up, Nietzsche’s, Rorty’s, and others’ reactions to Kantian ideas. Once philosophy has become impersonal, it has lost its ability to address the human condition in any meaningful way. Wittsgenstein gave it up.
Yes, semantics and sentence parsing may help achieve clarity; but they cannot, as mere tools, decipher the psychological and physical roots of meaning.

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A comment about Grayling - he means what he says. He is always clear and unpretentious when he writes. A born teacher, or so it seems. I thought that I read that he had passed away. I guess I’m glad to hear otherwise.

Everything is a tool. And only that. “Creative” thinking requires technique, just like every other difficult activity. Philosophers take positions. We can swallow those positions whole, or we can learn technique from them. Philosophers concentrate on the technique, as actual positions are easily had.

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I cannot escape from the feeling that the reduction of complex arguments into their constituitive atomic parts is such a necessary, nay inevitable, part of “doing philosophy” that it is unavoidable. It isn’t much of a step to go from this admission to the admission that we could not properly do philosophy without analytic intent.

Doesn’t the human brain naturally try to reduce complexity? This also goes hand in hand with the search for underlying assumptions; would doing away with analytic philosophy do away with our desire to unearth the assumptions that underpin thinking. I can’t see how the alternative would work as effectively, other than as a sort of art form.

Thanks for the links, James.

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A few points: I am not really involved in continental philosophy, except for Bourdieu, Foucault, Chaim Perelman, and Michel Meyer, the latter of whom are pretty obscure. I think that Meyer does the best job of putting continental and analytic philosophy in communication, but that’s a tough row to hoe.

Indeed, I have been heard to compare continental philosophy to the Washington Wizards, put on court to lose, or Perry Mason’s ill-fated adversary.

What I call myself is a pragmatist (pre-analytic). There’s some fit with Rorty. I am strongly anti-theoretical and anti-foundationalist, and believe that most philosophers (and social scientists) misunderstand contingency and particularity.

Analysis is, of course, necessary, but what I’m saying is that analytic philosophy has virtually abandoned the constructive, projective, or synthetic functions. I also say that classical philosophers like Aristotle, in their “big picture” philosophy such as politics or ethics, spoke the language of truth and tried to say truth, but were actually developing projective or constructive proposals; they were describing something that did not really exist yet, but which they proposed should exist. This kind of activity is ruled out by Fregean principles.

“Doesn’t the human brain naturally try to reduce complexity?” The human brain does lots of things, many of which are stupid. There is also a natural tendency to find meaning where there is none, and to percieve agents where there are none, and analytic philosophy (rightly) fights these tendencies. I’d say it’s a wash.

The Acton quote is in accordance with something I didn’t develop in my original piece: I think that analytic philosophy tends to do a poor job with personhood, agency, and emergent particularity in general, and this traces back to its inmsistence in reducing the indexical to the universal.

As far as “crying about nothing” – this is my sense from overhearing philosophers talk (Leiter, Velleman) together occasional library forays, where I take down a random bunch of journals and see what they’re doing. It may be that cutting-edge philosophy is moving in a direction I’d like, but the center of gravity of the profession seems to be about what I say it is.

Constructive, persuasive, comprehensive, and thick (mixed). These are four different points (and I didn’t even mention the indexicality question). As I said, I think that almost all analytic philosophers are weak on one ore more of these points (from my perspective), and many are weak on all of them. I think that the renunciation of persuasion (unwillingness to write for a non-professional audience, and the vigorous marking of text with implicit “Amateurs Keep Out” signs)

There are exceptions. For example, I didn not like Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” very much, but it’s the kind of thing I think philosophers should do. For another example, Pinker’s Blank Slate (which I don’t especially like) is not by a philosopher, and some of the philosophy per se is sloppy (naive uitilitarianism, for example), but it’s the kind of thing philosophers should write.

And thanks again.

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I think that the renunciation of persuasion (unwillingness to write for a non-professional audience, and the vigorous marking of text with implicit “Amateurs Keep Out” signs) is the most prevalent and most harmful. (Perhaps it’s just a degraded audience: Hegal and Kant were plenty technical, but they did have a large non-professional audience.)

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In theory it’s the best audience ever!

surely you would think with a rising standard of education and communication generally everywhere (obviously not so fast in some parts of the world) that actually there is even less justification for the retreat to extreme specialisation.

I also think that your point is well taken that Denet, Pinker (maybe even Dawkins) have now moved in to where “philosophers” fear to thread" and there are no real widely read “popularisers” of philosophy like there are of science (maybe Zizek - who I like a lot but he has ahis own very unique perspective and he’s probably still very, very philosophical e.g. still out of range of many…)

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John Emerson,
I really enjoy your posts. As for reductionism, allow me to express it as an artist would. All artists worth their salt realize that there is a huge gap between inspiration and its materialization. One can, in a fit of defending precision, erase until there is nothing left but a hole in a sheet of paper or a design that does not evoke meaning. Reductionism is an excellent tool for human understanding; but it has its limits. In physics the reduction of matter leads to energy. In philosophy the reduction of ideas leads to physical antecedents no one seems to want to acknowledge.
Meaning is produced on a symbolic level, so it is necessary to clarify symbols in order to achieve understanding.