Analytic Philosophy
Guy Longworth
University of Warwick
Analytic, or analytical, philosophy can be any of many things. In its primary sense,
`analytic philosophy' is used to describe philosophy that proceeds via analysis—
broadly, by seeking to understand the composition of its subject matter (or concepts of
that subject matter) out of simple (or simpler) components. So viewed, the type of
philosophy it covers has a very long history. In a prominent but secondary sense,
`analytic philosophy' applies to most philosophy carried out in the mainstream of
Anglo-American university philosophy departments together with philosophy that
bears a suitable family resemblance to it—work within the analytic tradition. Some
important marks of familial resemblance are a focus upon small parts of larger issues,
attention to fine details of the small parts, rigor and explicitness, with the latter often
facilitated by the use of formal methods. So viewed, analytic philosophy is often
contrasted with philosophy labelled `continental'—i.e., most philosophy carried out in the
mainstream of university philosophy departments in Continental Europe together with
philosophy that bears a suitable family resemblance to it. However, although some
philosophy that counts as analytic in the second sense is very different from some
philosophy that counts as continental, the two classifications are not exclusive (or,
indeed, exhaustive). Although the two senses of 'analytic philosophy' are quite
different, it is not an accident that the same expression is used for both. For the type of
philosophy that now dominates the Anglo-American mainstream began its rise to
prominence in the very late l9th Century at the same time, and due to some of the
same forces, as the emergence of analysis as the central method of that type of
philosophy. And analysis, broadly construed, has continued to play a large role in
much work in that tradition. I shall focus here on the emergence of the analytic
tradition and some ways in which it has modified its self-conception and thereby
broadened the sorts of philosophical work that it encompasses.
The method of analysis is the method of seeking to understand a subject
matter by coming to understand its composition. The aim is to understand the
behaviour of a whole by tracing its behaviour to the influences of its parts and their
organisation. In philosophy, the aim has often been to understand the inferential
behaviour of a concept, to understand what may be inferred from a judgement
involving the concept and what a judgement involving the concept may be inferred
from. For instance, some philosophers have hoped to understand the behaviour of the
concept of propositional knowledge—i.e. knowledge that such and such—by viewing it as
composed of other concepts: belief, truth, and justification. These philosophers hoped to
use this analysis to explain the apparent inferential behaviour of the concept, for example
the apparent fact that if someone knows that the sun is shining, then it may be inferred
that they believe that the sun is shining and that their belief is both true and justified.
The success of the method is dependent both upon the correctness of the analysis and
upon its capacity to deepen understanding by explaining the less well understood—the
whole—on the basis of what is better understood—the simpler components and the effects
of their configuration in the whole. The presented analysis of the concept of knowledge
arguably fails on both counts: it has been argued that the concept of knowledge is a simple
concept and so not composed of other concepts; and it has been argued that the concept of
justification (and perhaps also the concept of belief) is no simpler, or easier to
understand, than is the concept of knowledge.
1
The method of analysis played a role in early Greek philosophy (see e.g.
Plato's Theaetetus) and reappeared to take a major part in the early modern period, in the
work of Descartes and his followers. (See e.g. Arnauld (1662) on 'the method of
analysis'.) However, the method began gradually to lose its centrality during the rise of
German Idealism, as philosophers responded to the work of Kant by seeking to
develop grand systematic theories. In part, the aim of work in that tradition was to
respect what was thought to be the holistic interconnectedness of mind and world, an aim
thought not to be well served by the method of analysis. Although the method was a
th
central tool of some other important thinkers in the 19 century—most notably, Franz
Brentano and C. S. Pierce—its rise to prominence in 20th Century AngloAmerican philosophy was due mainly to the work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand
Russell.
In the very late 19th century, Moore began a revolt against German Idealism.
There were four main sources of dissent. First, Moore felt that Idealism—according to
which mind and world are interdependent—was an erroneous metaphysical view and
that, where possible, there should be a return to Realism—according to which there is an
external world that is constituted independently of operations of mind (except, of course,
where the external world contains individual minds). Second, he felt that the urge to
grand system building should be suppressed in favour of careful attention to detail and
rigorous argumentation. Third, and related, he objected to what he saw as unnecessary
obfuscation in the writings of German Idealists. He felt that philosophical
theories and arguments for those theories should be open to objective assessment and so
should be stated as clearly and sharply as possible. The first three sources of dissent
were based upon an unfavourable comparison of the major philosophical work of
the period with work in the sciences. In Moore's view, these more successful cognitive
practices should serve as a model for a better philosophical methodology. The same
motivations were at work in the fourth source of Moore's dissent, his negative reaction
to the Idealist suppression of the method of analysis. Calling for a return to the method,
Moore wrote that ... a thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its
constituent concepts' (Moore, 1899: 182).
Inspired by Moore, and enamoured in particular by the science of
mathematics, Russell began systematically to develop the programme of analysis. He was
helped by his discovery (or rediscovery) of modern quantificational logic. (See
especially Russell (1905). A very similar logic was developed in the medieval period.
However, the discovery of quantificational logic in its modern form is usually
attributed to Gottlob Frege (1879) and (independently) Peirce (1885). Although
Russell was aware of the work of both thinkers, their influence on his own
development of quantificational logic is not well understood.) This logic enables the
systematic treatment of the inferential behaviour of a very large range of the
statements that can be made in natural language (and so the thoughts expressible by the
use of those statements) as well as the sharp statement of complex positions and
arguments. Of special importance was Russell's treatment of definite descriptions,
sentences of the form 'The F is G', e.g. 'The present King of France is bald'. Russell
represented sentences of that form as conjoining three claims:
(1)
There is at least one F (e.g. there is at least one present King of France).
(2)
There is at most one F (e.g. there is at most one present King of France).
(3)
Whatever is F is G (e.g. what is present King of France is bald).
2
In modern logical notation, the analysis becomes:
(4)
(3x) [Fx & (Vy ) (Fy D x = y) & Gy].
By systematising a statement's inferential (or, more broadly, logical) behaviour, the
representation of the statement in a favoured logical system shows the (or, perhaps, a)
logical form of the statement. Russell's treatment provided a model on which a
definite description that fails to apply to exactly one individual may be meaningful and
so provided a potential solution to old problems about the functioning of talk that purports
to make reference to particular non-existents. On Russell's account, the fact that there is
no present King of France makes the sentence 'The King of France is bald' false,
rather than meaningless, due to its making false the first clause in his analysis. His
treatment also made especially evident that the logical form of a statement might
not be obvious from its superficial form. (However, the space between logical and
superficial form involved in Russell's treatment of 'The F is G' via (4) is an artefact of
Russell's favoured logic. An alternative, though slightly less perspicuous, treatment is
given in (5):
(5)
[The x: Fx] (Gx).)
Russell's treatment of definite descriptions showed that philosophical progress could be
made by discerning the (or a) logical form of a philosophically problematic range of
statements and that some philosophical disputes are usefully viewed as (at least in part)
concerning how best to represent the logical forms of statements involved in those
disputes. Together with the new treatment of quantification more generally, became a
model for a variety of approaches to philosophical problems that involved attention to
the forms of language used in the statement of those problems. For it supported the
view that philosophical problems can arise due to the misleading superficial forms of
the language we use and provided a model for how problems that arise in that way might
be solved through uncovering the true logical forms of the statements involved. (For
discussion of Russell's early development see Hylton (1993).)
Ludwig Wittgenstein was the most famous pupil of Russell and Moore.
Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) further developed the analysis of
statements, and of representation more generally, in the direction of logical
atomism. According to logical atomism, the most fundamental level of representation
involves point-by-point connections between simple representational elements—
representational atoms—and simple represented elements—represented atoms. This
paradigm of analysis—which bears comparison with aspects of Plato's Theaetetus— was
driven by the view that 'A proposition [i.e. the content of a statement] has one and only
one complete analysis' (1922: 3.25). The work's major conclusion was that there are two
types of statement: those that represent the world, and so can be either true or false
depending upon how the world in fact is—the synthetic truths and falsehoods—and
those that either cannot be true or cannot be false—the logical or analytic truths and
falsehoods—that fail to represent the world as being one way or another. Since
genuinely philosophical statements, derived by analysis, were taken to fall on the
non-representational (analytic) side of this divide, they were taken to be devoid of real
content and to have a role other than that of conveying information. And since a core
sense of meaningfulness was identified with representational
3
significance, such statements were taken to be—in that core sense—meaningless. (For an
introduction to Wittgenstein's early work, see Mounce (1989). For a discussion that
relates logical atomism with Plato's Theaetetus, see Burnyeat (1990).)
Members of the Vienna Circle—including especially Rudolf Carnap—were
inspired by Wittgenstein's work and sought to embed its central themes in an
approach to philosophy—logical positivism—shaped by epistemological concerns.
They replaced Wittgenstein's distinction between statements whose truth-value
depends upon worldly contingency and statements whose truth-value is fixed
independently of such contingency with a distinction between statements that admit of
verification or falsification on the basis of experience and statements that cannot be so
verified or falsified. The task of philosophy was taken to be the analysis of statements into
experientially significant components, an analysis that would either indicate precisely
the course of experience that would verify or falsify the statement or show it to be beyond
verification of falsification. In that way, philosophy would either show how a statement
can be assessed on the basis of scientific observation, or show the statement to be (in
the Circle's proprietary sense) meaningless. Since the only properly cognitive
activity was taken to be the collection of observations, the programme of the
Vienna Circle was shaped by the view that 'what is left over for philosophy ... is only a
method: the method of logical analysis' (Carnap, 1932: 77).
In the early post-1945 period, many philosophers retained the Vienna Circle's
animus towards traditional metaphysics but viewed its approach to analysis as overly
restrictive. They sought to replace what they saw as an empirically unmotivated
fixation upon a very narrow conception of empirical content with a more expansive
view of philosophical analysis. According to the more expansive view, the analysis of
statements was to include the tracing of their roles within larger systems of language
driven by careful attention to the way those statements are actually used in ordinary
contexts. The more expansive view therefore involved a partial return to the sort of
holistic approach involved in German Idealism. Wittgenstein's work within the more
expansive paradigm developed his earlier view that the role of philosophical analysis
should be largely therapeutic—that it should serve the removal of philosophical
perplexity by uncovering and excising the sources of confusion in the misleading
superficial forms of language. But many other philosophers working within the new
paradigm of analysis, including J. L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle, and P. F. Strawson—the
so-called 'ordinary language' philosophers—returned to the view that some
philosophical questions might be genuine and hoped that the analysis of language
would deliver answers to those questions.
W. V. Quine took a different path away from the Vienna Circle. Quine was
strongly influenced by the work of Carnap and retained the Circle's view that
scientific observation is the only source of cognitive significance. However, he
thought that Carnap had failed fully to draw out the consequences of that view. Quine
argued that the view served to undermine the distinction between statements that can be
verified or falsified on the basis of experience and those that cannot be so verified or
falsified—i.e. the Circle's version of the distinction between statements that are
analytic and those that are synthetic. (See e.g. Quine (1953.) Quine therefore took the
range of statements that are up for scientific assessment to include statements in logic and
mathematics. He took our total theory of the world to form an interconnected web of
statements that can only be assessed as a whole on the basis of the range of
predictions it makes about the course of experience. Again, Quine's work involved a
partial return to the holism of earlier periods and a rejection of the goal of atomist
analysis that formed the impetus for the earliest work in modern analytic philosophy.
4
Quine's rejection of the existence of a category of analytic truths went hand in hand
with a general rejection of the philosophical utility of appeals to unreconstructed notions of
linguistic meaning. In particular, Quine argued for the indeterminacy of translation,
the claim that for any translation from one language into another (including
translation from a language into itself), there will be other translations that have equally
good empirical credentials. For one famous instance, he argued that evidence that an
expression is to be translated by the English expression 'rabbit' can be equally good
evidence that the expression is to be translated by the English expression
`un-detached part of a rabbit'. (See Quine, 1960: 1-79.) When conjoined with Quine's
rejection of a principled distinction between analytic and synthetic statements,
acceptance of Quine's views has seemed to many to undermine the possibility of a
philosophy based upon methods of analysis. For the rejection of an analytic-synthetic
distinction appears to undermine a distinction between the analysis of statements and the
empirical assessment of those statements. And the rejection of determinate translation
appears to undermine the assumption that there is such a thing as the analysis of a
statement. (For discussion of Quine see Hookway (1988) and Hylton (2007).)
Quine's conclusions remain the subject of controversy. The main effects of his
work—either directly or indirectly—have involved the further broadening of the
analytic horizon. Many contemporary analytic philosophers who are influenced by
Quine's rejection of an analytic-synthetic distinction allow their work to be shaped by the
findings of empirical science. Under the same influence, many contemporary
analytic philosophers allow that philosophy—even when approached from the
armchair—can be a source of discovery about the world. Thus, the culmination, via
Quine, of the Vienna Circle's anti-metaphysical empiricism has led ultimately to the
reinstatement of metaphysics as a legitimate area of cognitive inquiry. Finally, many
contemporary philosophers have followed Quine in relegating the study of meaning
from its central place in the analytic philosophers' armoury and have sought a more
direct approach to answering philosophical questions.
The post-war period of intense focus upon language and linguistic meaning
coincided with Frege's work becoming widely available in translation and led to a reevaluation of his place in the development of analytic philosophy. In particular,
Michael Dummett has claimed that it is criterial of modern analytic philosophy that it
approaches the study of thought via a study of the way language is used to express
thought and that, from that perspective, Frege should be assigned priority over Russell as
its progenitor. (See Dummett (1993).) Dummett's claim is controversial for at least three
reasons. First, it is controversial that it is criterial of analytic philosophy that it assigns
methodological priority to the study of language. The criteria would appear not only to
place many contemporary philosophers who work within the analytic tradition
outside the bounds of analytic philosophy proper, but would also appear to exclude the
early work of Russell and Moore. Second, it is controversial that Frege would himself
count as an analytic philosophy by Dummett's standard, since he distrusted natural
language and sought to construct artificial systems better able to capture the nature of
thought. Third, although Frege's work now occupies a central place in the curriculum of
analytic philosophy, there is little consensus concerning its precise role in shaping the
initial development of the modern analytic tradition. His work had some influence on
Russell, as noted above, and exerted a powerful influence on both Wittgenstein
and Carnap. But other philosophers also played important roles in the development
of all three thinkers. What is uncontroversial, however, is that Frege's work possesses
many of the qualities associated with analytic
5
philosophy, including narrow focus, clarity, rigor and depth, and exhibits all those
qualities to a very high degree. To that extent, no education in analytic philosophy
would be complete that did not involve a careful study of his work. (An excellent
starting point is Frege (1884).)
References
Arnauld, A. and Nicole, P. (1683) La logique ou Part de penser : contenant outre les
regles communes, plusieurs observations nouvelles, propres a former le
jugement, 2nd edn., Paris: G. Desprez; reprinted as Arnauld, A. and Nicole, P.
(1996) Logic or The Art of Thinking, trans. and eds. J. V. Buroker, K.
Ameriks, and D. M. Clarke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burnyeat, M. F. (1990) The Theaetetus of Plato, trans. M. J. Levett, Indianapolis:
Hackett.
Carnap, R. (1932) `pberwindung der Mataphysik durch logische Analyse der
Sprache', Erkenntnis, 2: 219-41; reprinted as 'The Elimination of
Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language', trans. A. Pap in A. J.
Ayer ed. (1959) Logical Positivism, Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.
Descartes, R. (1701) Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Amsterdam: P & J. Blaeu.
reprinted in Descartes (1985) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1,
trans; and eds. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothof and D. Murdoch, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Dummett, M. A. E. (1993) Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Frege, G.
(1879) Begriffischrift: eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete
Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, Halle Reprinted in Frege
(1972)
Conceptual notation and related articles, trans. and ed. T. W. Bynum,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frege, G. (1884) Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logisch mathematische
Untersuchung fiber den Begriff der Zahl trans. Frege (1950) The Foundation of
Arithmetic. A logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number
trans. J. L. Austin, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hylton, P. (1993) Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hylton, P. (2007) Quine, London Routledge.
Moore, G. E. (1899) 'The Nature of Judgement', Mind, 8: 176-93.
Mounce, H. 0. (1989) Wittgenstein's Tractatus: An Introduction, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1885) 'On the Algebra of Logic; A Contribution to the Philosophy of
Notation', American Journal of Mathematics 7: 180-202; reprinted in Peirce
(1933) Collected Papers, eds. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Quine, W. V. (1953) 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', in his From a Logical Point of
View, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Quine, W. V. (1960) Word and Object, Cambridge: Mass.: MIT Press.
Russell, B. (1903) The Principles ofM athematics, London: Allen & Unwin.
Russell, B. (1905) 'On Denoting', Mind,
14: 479-93; reprinted in Russell
(1956)
Logic and Knowledge ed. R. Marsh, London: Allen & Unwin.
Wittgenstein, L. (1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden and F. P.
Ramsey, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
6