Analytic Philosophy

PHILOSOPHY & THE ANALYTIC TURN

All the Ivy League universities, all the leading state research universities, all the University of California campuses, most of the top liberal arts colleges, most of the flagship campuses of the second-tier state research universities boast philosophy departments that overwhelmingly self- identify as “analytic”: it is hard to imagine a “movement” that is more academically and professionally entrenched than analytic philosophy. — Brian Leiter, “The Philosophical Gourmet Report” Without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers. — John Searle

An important background issue related to the advent of analytic philosophy: British idealism Analytic philosophy—more precisely, what I called ‘programmatic analytic philosophy’—can be understood as an outgrowth of two concerns: to deal with worries concerning (i) problems in mathematics and the semantics of both natural and formal languages, and (ii) recent trends in epistemology and metaphysics, especially a rejection to the dominant school of philosophy at the time, namely, British idealism. Concerning the latter, analytic philosophy was bolstered by the philosophical reactions by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell to the dominant school of thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, namely, British idealism. • British idealism comes in two varieties: absolute idealism and subjective idealism. We’ll only focus on the former type. • Two very influential advocates of absolute idealism: F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality) and J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence). • According to the absolute idealists, all reality is mental and this reality is a unified singular entity, an integrated system of interdependent minds. The former makes the view a form of idealism; the latter makes the view a form of monism.

Why did they think that absolute idealism is true? There are many important theses used to justify the truth of absolute idealism. Let us consider the following:

On the impossibility of thinking of a mind-independent existence. One of the first steps in the case for idealism is negative: to call into question the coherence and justification of competing metaphysical views. According to the British idealists, the main competing view—metaphysical realism—is actually a conceptually incoherent view. What is metaphysical realism? It is the view that MP-REALISM: There’s at least one thing T such that T has one or more properties mind- independently. The British idealists argued that MP-REALISM is incoherent given that it is impossible to make theoretical sense of the very concept of a thing having the property exists mind-independently. Note that the idealist does not deny that it is prima facie true that we can make sense of such a state of being—it seems hard to imagine otherwise!—she simply argues that, if we are careful to examine whether we can actually do so, we will discover immediately that we cannot. Why does the idealist think that the concept of a mind-independent world is actually incoherent? According to idealist, IMI: It is not possible to think/imagine/conceive of a property, relation or object as existing mind-independently.1 If (IMI) is true, the implication is that the very concept of a thing’s existing mind-independently cannot be made coherent since it is not even possible to conceive of such a state. Argues the idealist, the coherence of metaphysical realism—of any variety—requires that a person be able to think of a thing having the property not being thought of. Yet, that is impossible! No person can think of a thing existing in the state not being thought of. So, argues the idealist, metaphysical realism is conceptually incoherent at “the ground level.” Of course, we should ask the following: does (IMI) imply there is no such thing as a mind- independent world, or merely that we cannot think/imagine/conceive of such a thing? Notice that these are two very different claims. The former is a claim about the nature of reality; the latter is a claim about the psychology of cognitive beings. It would seem that (IMI), at most, warrants the latter claim. If the idealist countenances that there may be a mind-independent world, but it is something of which we can neither cognitively access nor have any justification for thinking is there, then we presumably have a very different thesis than the idealist wants.2 This is an important question; for idealism is a metaphysical view about what exists, one that denies the reality of a mind-independent world. So, if (IMI) at most warrants a claim about cognitive beings, much more needs to be said in order to demonstrate that metaphysical realism is false. There may be grounds to which they will appeal to make the case, e.g., there may be justification for thinking any such thing is not there given the argument from Ockham’s Razor (alternatively: the principle of parsimony), but that needs further teasing out. The doctrine of reality and existential significance of internal relations. Let us turn to the absolute idealist’s case for monism. According to the absolute idealist, monism follows from the very important thesis called the doctrine of reality and existential significance of internal relations. Let us understand this doctrine according to the following principle:

1 The famous early modern philosopher, Bishop George Berkeley, was an idealist his being committed to something very similar to (IMI). 2 This is very much similar to the position that Kant attempts to demonstrate in Critique of Pure Reason (A [1781]; B [1787]). According to Kant, we are not capable of accessing the things-in-themselves, only the things-as-they-appear. Interestingly, when many of his contemporaries argued that this made him an idealist à la Berkeley, Kant argued that that was a mistaken reading of his view. He did not deny the reality of things-in-themselves; he denied our ability to access them. To paraphrase Kant, there is something that exists, the necessary ground of experience, but it is to us an unknown x. RIR: For any object O1, there is some set of objects {O2, O3, O4, …, On}, such that the

nature and existence of O1 is dependent on the nature and existence of O2 through

On and vice-versa. According to (RIR), had any one entity differed in its nature, every other entity would be different. Even worse, (RIR), in its strongest form, implies that if any entity lacked even one of its actual properties, the universe would not have existed. Why did the British idealists think that (RIR)—of any strength—is true? Two closely related reasons: 1. Let us understand by the term ‘property’ any quality that can be predicated truly of an object. Among the set of properties of that an object has are the properties of standing in relation to other objects, where the latter objects have certain properties. For instance, I have the property of being a philosophy professor who spends (an inordinate amount of) time rock and ice climbing. Accordingly, you have the property of taking a class from a philosophy professor who spends (an inordinate amount of) time rock and ice climbing. Call these properties ‘R’ and ‘T’, respectively. So, your having one of your properties—namely, T—is entirely dependent upon one of my properties—namely, R. Generalized, we get the following principle:

RP: For any object O and property F possessed by O, there are relational properties FS

and FD

(where ‘FS’ and ‘FD’ abbreviate to the properties being similar to O in possession of F and being dissimilar to O in a lack of possession of F). With (RP) and the following further theses

RIR-1: For any object O1, there is some set of objects {O2, O3, O4, …, On}, such that if O2,

O3, O4, …, On have some property F and O1 has F, then O1 also has FS and vice versa,

RIR-2: For any object O1, there is some set of objects {O2, O3, O4, …, On}, such that if O2,

O3, O4, …, On have some property F and O1 lacks F, then O1 also has FD and vice versa, and

RIR-3: For any object O1, if O1 has some property F, but at some point loses F, then for any

set of objects {O2, O3, O4, …, On}, if O2, O3, O4, …, On have F, then either O2, O3, O4,

…, On would lose FS and gain FD or O2, O3, O4, …, On lose F, we get the effect of change on an entity’s nature that is stated in (RIR). That is, given the conjunction of (RP), (RIR-1), (RIR-2) and (RIR-3), we can see that

CN: For any two objects O1 and O2, if O1 has some property F, then either O1 does not

lose F or O1 loses F and O2 loses FS and gains FD (or vice-versa), the claim that an object’s nature is affected by the nature of any other object is true. But what about the existence component of (RIR), that is, that an object’s existence depends on the existence of any other object? To show this, the absolute idealist brings our attention to another thesis.

2. According to the absolute idealists, every property is an essential property. That is, ESSENTIAL: For any object O and property F, if O is F, then O is essentially an F. Thus, ESSENTIAL¢: For any object O and property F, if O is F, then either O does not lose F or O loses F and ceases to exist. Yet, if ESSENTIAL¢ is true, then given (CN), we get the existence component of (RIR), namely,

CE: For any object O1, if there is some object O2 such that O2 has some property F, then

if O2 loses F, both O1 and O2 cease to exist or O2 does not lose F (and vice-versa).

Whether the absolute idealist is mistaken is an important question, but one we are not going to consider in detail. Nevertheless, the early analytic philosophers had deep reservations about absolute idealism and sought to refute it. The most noteworthy of these attempts are found in the works of G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. On one of the implications of absolute idealism. Why were the early analytic philosophers so bothered by the absolute idealist position? There are many concerns they had. One in particular is the following. It turns out that if absolute idealism is true, then it follows that IPA: Philosophical analysis is not possible where philosophical analysis is the process of decomposing some complex entity into its parts (simple or complex). As we saw earlier, absolute idealism is a monistic theory. That means that not only is there only one kind of thing, but according to the absolute idealists, there is really— contrary to appearances—only one thing. As we will see, (IPA) is going to be an important thesis that the early analytic philosophers are going to try to demonstrate to be false.

SOME IMPORTANT QUOTES FROM F.H. BRADLEY, APPEARANCE AND REALITY: A METAPHYSICAL ESSAY (1893)

Book I: Appearance On problems with the substance–property distinction “The [substance–property distinction] is a time-honoured distinction and arrangement of facts, with a view to understand them and arrive at reality. I must briefly point out the failure of this method, if regarded as a serious attempt at theory” (19).

“We may take the familiar instance of a lump of sugar. This is a thing, and it has properties… It is, for example, white and hard, and sweet…. [But] a thing is not any one of its qualities, if you take that quality by itself . . . Nor, again, can the thing be all its properties, if you take them each severally. Sugar is obviously not mere whiteness, mere hardness, and mere sweetness; for its reality lies somehow in its unity. But if, on the other hand, we inquire what there can be in the thing besides its several qualities, we are baffled once more. We can discover no real unity existing outside these qualities, or, again, existing within them” (ibid.). “Let us abstain from making the relation an attribute of the related, and let us make it more or less independent. ‘There is a relation C, in which A and B stand; and it appears with both of them.’ But here again we have made no progress. The relation C has been admitted different from A and B, and no longer is predicated of them…. If so, [there] would appear to be another relation, D, in which C, on the one side, and, on the other side, A and B, stand. But such a makeshift leads at once to the infinite [regress]” (21).

Book II: Reality On the general nature of reality “Our result so far is this. Everything phenomenal is somehow real; and the absolute must at least be as rich as the relative. And, further, the Absolute is not many; there are no independent reals. The universe is one in this sense that its differences exist harmoniously within one whole, beyond which there is nothing. Hence the Absolute is, so far, an individual and a system but, if we stop here, it remains but formal and abstract. Can we then, the question is, say anything about the concrete nature of the system? Certainly, I think, this is possible. When we ask as to the matter which fills up the empty outline, we can reply in one word, that this matter is experience…. Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this is not real. We may say, in other words, that there is no being or fact outside of that which is commonly called psychical existence. Feeling, thought, and volition . . . are all the material of existence, and there is no other material, actual or even possible. This result in its general form seems evident at once...” (144).

“I will state the case briefly thus. Find any piece of existence, take up anything that any one could possibly call a fact, or could in any sense assert to have being, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient experience. Try to discover any sense in which you can still continue to speak of it, when all perception and feeling have been removed; or point out any fragment of its matter, any aspect of its being, which is not derived from and is not still relative to this source. When the experiment is made strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced. Anything, in no sense felt or perceived, becomes to me quite unmeaning. And as I try to think of it without realizing either that I am not thinking at all, or that am of it thinking against I my will as being experienced, I am driven to the conclusion that for me experience is the same as reality. The fact that falls elsewhere seems, in my mind, to be a mere word and a failure, or else an attempt at self-contradiction. It is a vicious abstraction whose existence; is meaningless nonsense, and is therefore not possible” (145).3