[Wittrs] Re: What constitutes "Analytic Philosophy"?
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:13:43 -0700 (PDT)
... a couple of thoughts.
1. Conversations about "analytic philosophy" share similarities with
conversations about "analytical writing" (as opposed to other kinds of
writing).
Just as the word "analyticity" purports to say something. It grammar here
shares
similarities with people who differentiate historical epochs in intellectual
culture: classical, enlightenment, moral-sciences, post-modern, etc. And is
shares similarities with those who talk about formalism as an idea in law.
In all of the above cases, there is still "reasoning" going on in the things
considered "not analytic." There is still thinking. So, in these expressions,
analyticity is seen as a TYPE of approach.
Wittgenstein's relationship to this approach could EASILY be seen as being its
central father as well as its central destroyer. In truth, what Wittgenstein
really represents is the person who TRANSCENDED it. He represents someone who
both inaugurated and saw the folly of an entire intellectual epoch in the
culture of human thought.
2. The sense of "analytic philosophy" that I am thinking about right now goes
something like this. (And there are many senses of the idea). There is some
idea, X, for which the idea cannot be completely understood without bringing to
bear some kind of self-contained analysis. The tools are always definition,
premise, logic, conclusion, proof. And what happens is that these tools are
brought to bear upon curious "problems:"
1. Do I exist? Go ahead, prove it.
2. Do I have free will?
3. Is the world real?
4. Do I know?
In the moral sciences period, one brought these tools to bear on questions
like:
what is love? What is law? What is moral? In the classical, Aristotelian era,
one took certain things as starting points, like, "God exists," and directed
the
labor of "proof" toward those ends.
3. The central thing that Wittgenstein does to analyticity (in the sense above)
is twofold. First, he tells us that the basic problems to which philosophers
apply the methods are false. Next, he tells us that philosophy is wrong to
imitate mathematics or science, and that philosophic problems of the sort
listed
above have absolutely nothing to do with formalism. That is, they are not
formalistic problems. You needn't have Gettier any more than you need have JTB.
There never was a problem with "how do you know" that required a proof.
And, as such, Wittgenstein tells us that the things philosophers worry about
are
best accounted for by tools of anthropology, psychology, culture and
connoisseur judgment. And that true philosophy, as a brain skill, is more akin
to therapy that allows one to see conditions of assertability, grammar,
pictures
of account (aspect seeing) and the way one's lexicon functions against other
ways of speaking.
And that, worrying about these things is really a way to deal with issues at a
meta-level. If you deal with them at an ordinary level, you try to fight
premises, logic, definitions and so forth. You clash swords. Wittgenstein tells
us, in essence, that fencing is a poor way to "ideate." It would be like
shoveling with a spoon.
The difficulty, of course, is that doctoring beliefs at a meta level
(assertability conditions, pictures, etc.) requires a certain orientation or
skill for that. It's not a coincidence that it takes around 50 years for mass
culture to absorb new developments in philosophy. It's not a coincidence that
Wittgenstein's ideas are still trying to be understood by philosophy itself. To
see Wittgenstein requires a reorientation. It requires a teaching.
Wittgenstein put to bed philosophy as history knew it. If Socrates is said in
popular lure to be philosophy's George Washington, it is Wittgenstein who is
it's Caesar (that is, it's other book end).
It is no coincidence that intellectual culture sees philosophy as a humanities
today. Or that philosophy itself has changed to new forms: trying to be the
law-school prep place (political science used to do this); doing empirical
work;
trying to be "information philosophy" -- debating the significance of new
discoveries in science. It's no coincidence that pragmatism and post-modernism
have risen in intellectual culture the way they have -- even if they may be
misguided in certain aspects.
These are all legacies of the demons that Wittgenstein unleashed into field of
philosophy (and culture). I want to say this clearly: Wittgenstein is the
father
of anti-formalism. I myself am a post-formalistic thinker who claims
Wittgenstein as the primary heir for such an outlook.
This is not to say that philosophy as traditionally understood is BAD -- I
would
argue just the opposite. Kids surely should be exposed the false problems and
language games. But the point is only ever to heighten their abilities to come
to see the problems for being constructed solely for purposes of those language
games. Students can't be told this; they would only mimic it. Hence, philosophy
the social club must carry on certain kinds of business. There is nothing wrong
with the Karate school as such. Just so long as people "get": that the whole
thing is simply a thinking exercise. Regards and thanks.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs
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