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Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using
analysis which is popular in the Western World and particularly the
Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the
contemporary era and continues today. In the United Kingdom, United States,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia, the majority of university
philosophy departments today identify themselves as "analytic"
departments.[1] Central figures in this historical development of analytic
philosophy are Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Other important figures in its history include the logical
positivists (particularly Rudolf Carnap), W. V. O. Quine, Saul Kripke, and Karl
Popper. Analytic philosophy is characterized by an emphasis on language, known
as the linguistic turn, and for its clarity and rigor in arguments, making use
of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural
sciences.[2][3][4] It also takes things piecemeal, in "an attempt to focus
philosophical reflection on smaller problems that lead to answers to bigger
questions."[5][6] Analytic philosophy is often understood in contrast to
other philosophical traditions, most notably continental philosophies such as
existentialism, phenomenology, and Hegelianism.[7]
History:
The history of analytic philosophy (taken in the narrower sense of
"20th-/21st-century analytic philosophy") is usually thought to begin
with the rejection of British idealism, a neo-Hegelian movement.[8] British
idealism as taught by philosophers such as F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) and
T. H. Green (1836–1882), dominated English philosophy in the late 19th
century. Since its beginning, a basic goal of analytic philosophy has been
conceptual clarity,[9] in the name of which Moore and Russell rejected
Hegelianism for being obscure—see for example Moore's "A Defence of
Common Sense" and Russell's critique of the doctrine of internal
relations.[10] Inspired by developments in modern formal logic, the early
Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the
simple constituents of complex notions.[9] An important aspect of British
idealism was logical holism—the opinion that there are aspects of the
world that can be known only by knowing the whole world. This is closely
related to the opinion that relations between items are internal relations,
that is, properties of the nature of those items. Russell, along with
Wittgenstein, in response promulgated logical atomism and the doctrine of
external relations—the belief that the world consists of independent
facts.[11] Russell, during his early career, along with his collaborator Alfred
North Whitehead, was much influenced by Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), who
developed predicate logic, which allowed a much greater range of sentences to
be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancient Aristotelian
logic.
Frege was also influential as a philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the
beginning of the 20th century. In contrast to Edmund Husserl's 1891 book
Philosophie der Arithmetik, which argued that the concept of the cardinal
number derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them,[12]
Frege argued that mathematics and logic have their own validity, independent of
the judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians
(which were the basis of arithmetic according to the "psychologism"
of Husserl's Philosophie). Frege further developed his philosophy of logic and
mathematics in The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) and The Basic Laws of
Arithmetic (German: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893–1903), where he
provided an alternative to psychologistic accounts of the concept of number.
Like Frege, Russell argued that mathematics is reducible to logical
fundamentals in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). Later, his book written
with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), encouraged many
philosophers to renew their interest in the development of symbolic logic.
Additionally, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary
philosophical method, a method Russell thought could expose the underlying
structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word
"is" has three distinct meanings which predicate logic can express as
follows: For the sentence 'the cat is asleep', the is of predication means that
"x is P" (denoted as P(x)). For the sentence 'there is a cat', the is
of existence means that "there is an x" (?x). For the sentence 'three
is half of six', the is of identity means that "x is the same as y"
(x=y). Russell sought to resolve various philosophical problems by applying
such logical distinctions, most famously in his analysis of definite
descriptions in "On Denoting" (1905).[13]
Ideal language:
Main article: Ideal language philosophy:
From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like Russell and Ludwig
Wittgenstein emphasized creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis,
which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their
opinion, often made philosophy invalid. During this phase, Russell and
Wittgenstein sought to understand language (and hence philosophical problems)
by using logic to formalize how philosophical statements are made.
Logical atomism:
Russell became an advocate of logical atomism. Wittgenstein developed a
comprehensive system of logical atomism in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(German: Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, 1921). He thereby argued that the
universe is the totality of actual states of affairs and that these states of
affairs can be expressed by the language of first-order predicate logic. Thus a
picture of the universe can be construed by expressing facts in the form of
atomic propositions and linking them using logical operators.
Logical positivism:
Main article: Logical positivism:
During the late 1920s to 1940s, a group of philosophers of the Vienna Circle
and the Berlin Circle developed Russell and Wittgenstein's formalism into a
doctrine known as "logical positivism" (or logical empiricism).
Logical positivism used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account
of knowledge.[14] Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach,
along with other members of the Vienna Circle, claimed that the truths of logic
and mathematics were tautologies, and those of science were verifiable
empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful
judgments; anything else was nonsense. The claims of ethics, aesthetics, and
theology were consequently reduced to pseudo-statements, neither empirically
true nor false and therefore meaningless.
In reaction to what he considered excesses of logical positivism, Karl Popper
insisted on the role of falsification in the philosophy of
science—although his general method was also part of the analytic
tradition.[15] With the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1933,
many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled to Britain and the US, which
helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy
in anglophone countries. Logical positivists typically considered philosophy as
having a minimal function. For them, philosophy concerned the clarification of
thoughts, rather than having a distinct subject matter of its own. The
positivists adopted the verification principle, according to which every
meaningful statement is either analytic or is capable of being verified by
experience. This caused the logical positivists to reject many traditional
problems of philosophy, especially those of metaphysics or ontology, as
meaningless.
Ordinary language:
Main article: Ordinary language philosophy:
After World War II, during the late 1940s and 1950s, analytic philosophy became
involved with ordinary-language analysis. This resulted in two main trends. One
continued Wittgenstein's later philosophy, which differed dramatically from his
early work of the Tractatus. The other, known as "Oxford philosophy",
involved J. L. Austin.[16] In contrast to earlier analytic philosophers
(including the early Wittgenstein) who thought philosophers should avoid the
deceptive trappings of natural language by constructing ideal languages,
ordinary-language philosophers claimed that ordinary language already
represents many subtle distinctions not recognized in the formulation of
traditional philosophical theories or problems. While schools such as logical
positivism emphasize 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.
The most prominent ordinary-language philosophers during the 1950s were the
aforementioned Austin and Gilbert Ryle.
Ordinary-language philosophers often sought to dissolve philosophical problems
by showing them to be the result of ordinary misunderstanding language.
Examples include Ryle, who tried to dispose of "Descartes' myth", and
Wittgenstein. Contemporary analytic philosophy Although contemporary
philosophers who self-identify as "analytic" have widely divergent
interests, assumptions, and methods—and have often rejected the
fundamental premises that defined analytic philosophy before 1960—analytic
philosophy today is usually considered to be determined by a particular
style,[2] characterized by precision and thoroughness about a specific topic,
and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad
topics".[17] During the 1950s, logical positivism was challenged
influentially by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, Quine in
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", and Sellars in Empiricism and the
Philosophy of Mind. After 1960, anglophone philosophy began to incorporate a
wider range of interests, opinions, and methods.[17]
Still, many philosophers in Britain and America still consider themselves
"analytic philosophers".[1][2] They have done so largely by expanding
the notion of "analytic philosophy" from the specific programs that
dominated anglophone philosophy before 1960 to a much more general notion of an
"analytic" style.[17] Many philosophers and historians have attempted
to define or describe analytic philosophy. Those definitions often include an
emphasis on conceptual analysis: A.P. Martinich draws an analogy between
analytic philosophy's interest in conceptual analysis and analytic chemistry,
which aims to determine chemical compositions.[18] Steven D. Hales described
analytic philosophy as one of three types of philosophical method practiced in
the West: "[i]n roughly reverse order by number of proponents, they are
phenomenology, ideological philosophy, and analytic philosophy".[19] Scott
Soames agrees that clarity is important: analytic philosophy, he says, has
"an implicit commitment—albeit faltering and imperfect—to the
ideals of clarity, rigor and argumentation" and it "aims at truth and
knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement [...] the goal in
analytic philosophy is to discover what is true, not to provide a useful recipe
for living one's life". Soames also states that analytic philosophy is
characterized by "a more piecemeal approach. There is, I think, a
widespread presumption within the tradition that it is often possible to make
philosophical progress by intensively investigating a small, circumscribed
range of philosophical issues while holding broader, systematic questions in
abeyance".[20]
A few of the most important and active topics and subtopics of analytic
philosophy are summarized by the following sections.
Philosophy of mind and cognitive science Motivated by the logical positivists'
interest in verificationism, logical behaviorism was the most prominent theory
of mind of analytic philosophy for the first half of the 20th century.[21]
Behaviorists tended to opine either that statements about the mind were
equivalent to statements about behavior and dispositions to behave in
particular ways or that mental states were directly equivalent to behavior and
dispositions to behave. Behaviorism later became much less popular, in favor of
type physicalism or functionalism, theories that identified mental states with
brain states. During this period, topics of the philosophy of mind were often
related strongly to topics of cognitive science such as modularity or
innateness. Finally, analytic philosophy has featured a certain number of
philosophers who were dualists, and recently forms of property dualism have had
a resurgence; the most prominent representative is David Chalmers.[22] John
Searle suggests that the obsession with the philosophy of language during the
20th century has been superseded by an emphasis on the philosophy of mind,[23]
in which functionalism is currently the dominant theory. In recent years, a
central focus of research in the philosophy of mind has been consciousness.
While there is a general consensus for the global neuronal workspace model of
consciousness,[24] there are many opinions as to the specifics. The best known
theories are Daniel Dennett's heterophenomenology, Fred Dretske and Michael
Tye's representationalism, and the higher-order theories of either David M.
Rosenthal—who advocates a higher-order thought (HOT) model—or David
Armstrong and William Lycan—who advocate a higher-order perception (HOP)
model. An alternative higher-order theory, the higher-order global states
(HOGS) model, is offered by Robert van Gulick.[25]
Ethics in analytic philosophy:
Due to the commitments to empiricism and symbolic logic in the early analytic
period, early analytic philosophers often thought that inquiry in the ethical
domain could not be made rigorous enough to merit any attention.[26] It was
only with the emergence of ordinary language philosophers that ethics started
to become an acceptable area of inquiry for analytic philosophers.[26]
Philosophers working with the analytic tradition have gradually come to
distinguish three major types of moral philosophy. Meta-ethics which
investigates moral terms and concepts;[27]
Normative ethics which examines and produces normative ethical judgments;
Applied ethics, which investigates how existing normative principles should be
applied to difficult or borderline cases, often cases created by new technology
or new scientific knowledge.
Meta-ethics:
Twentieth-century meta-ethics has two origins. The first is G.E. Moore's
investigation into the nature of ethical terms (e.g., good) in his Principia
Ethica (1903), which identified the naturalistic fallacy. Along with Hume's
famous is/ought distinction, the naturalistic fallacy was a major topic of
investigation for analytical philosophers. The second is in logical positivism
and its attitude that unverifiable statements are meaningless. Although that
attitude was adopted originally to promote scientific investigation by
rejecting grand metaphysical systems, it had the side effect of making (ethical
and aesthetic) value judgments (as well as religious statements and beliefs)
meaningless. But because value judgments are of significant importance in human
life, it became incumbent on logical positivism to develop an explanation of
the nature and meaning of value judgments. As a result, analytic philosophers
avoided normative ethics and instead began meta-ethical investigations into the
nature of moral terms, statements, and judgments. The logical positivists
opined that statements about value—including all ethical and aesthetic
judgments—are non-cognitive; that is, they cannot be objectively verified
or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted an emotivist theory,
which was that value judgments expressed the attitude of the speaker. For
example, in this view, saying, "Killing is wrong", is equivalent to
saying, "Boo to murder", or saying the word "murder" with a
particular tone of disapproval. While analytic philosophers generally accepted
non-cognitivism, emotivism had many deficiencies. It evolved into more
sophisticated non-cognitivist theories such as the expressivism of Charles
Stevenson, and the universal prescriptivism of R.M. Hare, which was based on
J.L. Austin's philosophy of speech acts. These theories were not without their
critics. Philippa Foot contributed several essays attacking all these theories.
J.O. Urmson's article "On Grading" called the is/ought distinction
into question. As non-cognitivism, the is/ought distinction, and the
naturalistic fallacy began to be called into question, analytic philosophers
showed a renewed interest in the traditional questions of moral philosophy.
Perhaps the most influential being Elizabeth Anscombe, whose monograph
Intention was called by Donald Davidson "the most important treatment of
action since Aristotle".[28] A favorite student and friend of Ludwig
Wittgenstein, her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced
the term "consequentialism" into the philosophical lexicon, declared
the "is-ought" impasse to be unproductive, and resulted in a revival
of virtue ethics.
Normative ethics:
The first half of the 20th century was marked by skepticism toward and neglect
of normative ethics. Related subjects, such as social and political philosophy,
aesthetics, and philosophy of history, became only marginal topics of
English-language philosophy during this period. During this time,
utilitarianism was the only non-skeptical type of ethics to remain popular.
However, as the influence of logical positivism began to decrease mid-century,
analytic philosophers had renewed interest in ethics. G.E.M. Anscombe's 1958
"Modern Moral Philosophy" sparked a revival of Aristotle's virtue
ethical approach and John Rawls's 1971 A Theory of Justice restored interest in
Kantian ethical philosophy. Today, contemporary normative ethics is dominated
by three schools: consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology.
Applied ethics:
A significant feature of analytic philosophy since approximately 1970 has been
the emergence of applied ethics—an interest in the application of moral
principles to specific practical issues. The philosophers following this
orientation view ethics as involving humanistic values, which involve practical
implications and applications in the way people interact and lead their lives
socially.[29] Topics of special interest for applied ethics include
environmental issues, animal rights, and the many challenges created by
advancing medical science.[30][31][32] In education, applied ethics addressed
themes such as punishment in schools, equality of educational opportunity, and
education for democracy.[33]
Analytic philosophy of religion:
In Analytic Philosophy of Religion, Harris noted that analytic philosophy has
been a very heterogeneous 'movement'.... some forms of analytic philosophy have
proven very sympathetic to the philosophy of religion and have provided a
philosophical mechanism for responding to other more radical and hostile forms
of analytic philosophy.[34]:3 As with the study of ethics, early analytic
philosophy tended to avoid the study of philosophy of religion, largely
dismissing (as per the logical positivists) the subject as part of metaphysics
and therefore meaningless.[35]
The demise of logical positivism renewed interest in philosophy of religion,
prompting philosophers like William Alston, John Mackie, Alvin Plantinga,
Robert Merrihew Adams, Richard Swinburne, and Antony Flew not only to introduce
new problems, but to re-study classical topics such as the nature of miracles,
theistic arguments, the problem of evil, (see existence of God) the rationality
of belief in God, concepts of the nature of God, and many more.[36] Plantinga,
Mackie and Flew debated the logical validity of the free will defense as a way
to solve the problem of evil.[37]
Alston, grappling with the consequences of analytic philosophy of language,
worked on the nature of religious language. Adams worked on the relationship of
faith and morality.[38] Analytic epistemology and metaphysics has formed the
basis for some philosophically-sophisticated theistic arguments, like those of
the reformed epistemologists like Plantinga. Analytic philosophy of religion
has also been preoccupied with Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation of
Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion.[39] Using first-hand remarks
(which was later published in Philosophical Investigations, Culture and Value,
and other works), philosophers such as Peter Winch and Norman Malcolm developed
what has come to be known as contemplative philosophy, a Wittgensteinian school
of thought rooted in the "Swansea tradition," and which includes
Wittgensteinians such as Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, and D.Z. Phillips, among
others. The name "contemplative philosophy" was first coined by D.Z.
Phillips in Philosophy's Cool Place, which rests on an interpretation of a
passage from Wittgenstein's "Culture and Value."[40] This
interpretation was first labeled, "Wittgensteinian Fideism," by Kai
Nielsen but those who consider themselves Wittgensteinians in the Swansea
tradition have relentlessly and repeatedly rejected this construal as a
caricature of Wittgenstein's considered position; this is especially true of
D.Z. Phillips.[41] Responding to this interpretation, Kai Nielsen and D.Z.
Phillips became two of the most prominent philosophers on Wittgenstein's
philosophy of religion.[42]
Political philosophy:
Liberalism:
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 defense of a generally liberal egalitarian account of
distributive justice. This was followed soon by Rawls's colleague Robert
Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defence of free-market
libertarianism. Isaiah Berlin also had a lasting influence on both analytic
political philosophy and liberalism with his lecture "Two Concepts of
Liberty". During recent decades there have also been several critiques of
liberalism, including the feminist critiques of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea
Dworkin, the communitarian critiques of Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre
(although neither of them endorses the term), and the multiculturalist
critiques of Amy Gutmann and Charles Taylor. Although not an analytic
philosopher, Jürgen Habermas is another prominent—if
controversial—author of contemporary analytic political philosophy, whose
social theory is a blend of social science, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, and
American pragmatism. Consequentialist libertarianism also derives from the
analytic tradition.
Analytical Marxism:
Another development of political philosophy was the emergence of the school of
analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply techniques of analytic
philosophy and modern social science such as rational choice theory to clarify
the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best-known member of this
school is G. A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A
Defence, is generally considered to represent the genesis of this school. In
that book, Cohen used logical and linguistic analysis to clarify and defend
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. The work of these later philosophers have
furthered Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, such
as rational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical
techniques in the interpretation of Marxian theory. Cohen himself would later
engage directly with Rawlsian political philosophy to advance a socialist
theory of justice that contrasts with both traditional Marxism and the theories
advanced by Rawls and Nozick. In particular, he indicates Marx's principle of
from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
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 main assumptions of liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and
then challenges these assumptions. In particular, communitarians challenge the
liberal assumption that the individual can be considered as fully autonomous
from the community in which he lives and is brought up. Instead, they argue for
a conception of the individual that emphasizes the role that the community
plays in forming his or her values, thought processes and opinions.
Analytic metaphysics:
Main article: Metaphysics:
One striking difference with respect to early analytic philosophy was the
revival of metaphysical theorizing during the second half of the 20th century.
Philosophers such as David Kellogg Lewis[43] and David Armstrong[44] developed
elaborate theories on a range of topics such as universals,[45][46]
causation,[47] possibility and necessity,[48] and abstract objects.[49] Among
the developments that resulted in the revival of metaphysical theorizing were
Quine's attack on the analytic–synthetic distinction, which was generally
considered to weaken Carnap's distinction between existence questions internal
to a framework and those external to it.[50] Important also for the revival of
metaphysics was the further development of modal logic, including the work of
Saul Kripke, who argued in Naming and Necessity and elsewhere for the existence
of essences and the possibility of necessary, a posteriori truths.[51]
Metaphysics remains a fertile topic of research, having recovered from the
attacks of A.J. Ayer and the logical positivists. Although many discussions are
continuations of old ones from previous decades and centuries, the debate
remains active. The philosophy of fiction, the problem of empty names, and the
debate over existence's status as a property have all become major concerns,
while perennial issues such as free will, possible worlds, and the philosophy
of time have been revived.[52][53] Science has also had an increasingly
significant role in metaphysics. The theory of special relativity has had a
profound effect on the philosophy of time, and quantum physics is routinely
discussed in the free will debate.[53] The weight given to scientific evidence
is largely due to widespread commitments among philosophers to scientific
realism and naturalism.
Philosophy of language:
Main article: Philosophy of language:
Philosophy of language is a topic that has decreased in activity during the
last four decades, as evidenced by the fact that few major philosophers today
treat it as a primary research topic. Indeed, while the debate remains fierce,
it is still strongly influenced by those authors from the first half of the
century: Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin,
Alfred Tarski, and W.V.O. Quine. In Saul Kripke's publication Naming and
Necessity, he argued influentially that flaws in common theories of proper
names are indicative of larger misunderstandings of the metaphysics of
necessity and possibility. By wedding the techniques of modal logic to a causal
theory of reference, Kripke was widely regarded as reviving theories of essence
and identity as respectable topics of philosophical discussion.
Another influential philosopher, Pavel Tichý initiated Transparent
Intensional Logic, an original theory of the logical analysis of natural
languages—the theory is devoted to the problem of saying exactly what it
is that we learn, know and can communicate when we come to understand what a
sentence means.
Philosophy of science:
Main article: Philosophy of science:
Reacting against both the verificationism of the logical positivists as well as
the critiques of the philosopher of science Karl Popper, who had suggested the
falsifiability criterion on which to judge the demarcation between science and
non-science, discussions of philosophy of science during the last 40 years were
dominated by social constructivist and cognitive relativist theories of
science. Thomas Samuel Kuhn with his formulation of paradigm shifts and Paul
Feyerabend with his epistemological anarchism are significant for these
discussions.[54] The philosophy of biology has also undergone considerable
growth, particularly due to the considerable debate in recent years over the
nature of evolution, particularly natural selection.[55] Daniel Dennett and his
1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which defends Neo-Darwinism, stand at the
foreground of this debate.[56]
Epistemology:
Main article: Epistemology:
Owing largely to Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief
Knowledge?",[57] epistemology resurged as a topic of analytic philosophy
during the last 50 years. A large portion of current epistemological research
is intended to resolve the problems that Gettier's examples presented to the
traditional justified true belief model of knowledge, including developing
theories of justification in order to deal with Gettier's examples, or giving
alternatives to the justified true belief model. Other and related topics of
contemporary research include debates between internalism and externalism,[58]
basic knowledge, the nature of evidence, the value of knowledge, epistemic
luck, virtue epistemology, the role of intuitions in justification, and
treating knowledge as a primitive concept. Aesthetics Main article: Aesthetics
As a result of attacks on the traditional aesthetic notions of beauty and
sublimity from post-modern thinkers, analytic philosophers were slow to
consider art and aesthetic judgment. Susanne Langer[59] and Nelson Goodman[60]
addressed these problems in an analytic style during the 1950s and 1960s. Since
Goodman, aesthetics as a discipline for analytic philosophers has
flourished.[61] Rigorous efforts to pursue analyses of traditional aesthetic
concepts were performed by Guy Sircello in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in
new analytic theories of love,[62] sublimity,[63] and beauty.[64]
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