Analytic Philosophy

An Interpretive History

Aaron Preston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317556817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History explores the ways interpretation (of key figures, factions, texts, etc.) shaped the analytic tradition, from Frege to Dummet. It offers readers 17 chapters, written especially for this volume by an international cast of leading scholars. Some chapters are devoted to large, thematic issues like the relationship between analytic philosophy and other philosophical traditions such as British Idealism and phenomenology, while other chapters are tied to more fine-grained topics or to individual philosophers, like Moore and Russell on philosophical method or the history of interpretations of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Throughout, the focus is on interpretations that are crucial to the origin, development, and persistence of the analytic tradition. The result is a more fully formed and philosophically satisfying portrait of analytic philosophy.

1

Editor’s Introduction

Interpreting the Analytic Tradition

Aaron Preston

This collection aims to examine the role of interpretation in shaping analytic philosophy, understood here as a philosophical tradition (more on which shortly). Central to this project is the notion of a tradition-shaping interpretation. By “tradition-shaping interpretation” I mean (roughly) an interpretation that was or is crucial to the origin, development, or persistence of a tradition. Some tradition-shaping interpretations interact with the relevant tradition at a relatively fine-grained level, pertaining directly to the canonical figures, factions, views, and texts that comprise it. For example, the logical positivists’ interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus facilitated grouping Wittgenstein and the positivists together as “analytic philosophers” in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. Thus it indirectly shaped the analytic tradition as a whole: both Wittgenstein and the logical positivists are core, canonical members of the tradition in part because of this early interpretation of Wittgenstein (which most would now regard as a misinterpretation).

Other tradition-shaping interpretations occur at a more coarse-grained level, pertaining directly to the tradition as a whole. For instance, it was once widely believed that analytic philosophy was defined by a commitment to linguistic analysis as the uniquely correct philosophical method and that there were clear boundaries between analytic philosophy, pragmatism, and so-called “Continental philosophy.” But things have changed. No one thinks that contemporary analytic philosophy is committed to linguistic analysis, and historians of analytic philosophy question whether this was a defining commitment of the tradition at any stage of its development. Meanwhile, new interpretations of Quine portray him as a pragmatist as much as an analyst (cf. Godfrey-Smith 2014), thus blurring the lines between the two traditions and causing us to wonder whether they were ever that clear to begin with (on this latter point, see Cheryl Misak’s chapter in the present volume). Likewise, some have claimed to see similarities between the later Wittgenstein and some prominent themes in Continental thought (cf. Staten 1984, Garver and Lee 1994). Interpretations of Wittgenstein along these and similar lines blur the boundaries between those traditions and have raised questions concerning Wittgenstein’s status as an analytic philosopher (cf. Glock 2004).

Given these quick examples, it should be obvious that what we nowadays call “the analytic tradition” can to a great extent be characterized as the result of the interplay of changing interpretations at different levels of granularity—at the level of individual philosophers and their works on the one hand and, on the other, at various levels of aggregation, from sub-groups within the tradition (such as logical positivism or Oxford philosophy) to the tradition as a whole. This may seem a surprising proposal, not least because characterizing analytic philosophy in this way has a distinctively Continental/hermeneutical air to it. Be that as it may, reflection on the nature of intellectual traditions shows that there is nothing unusual about interpretation playing a formative role. To my knowledge, the most influential understanding of “tradition” in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy (and, for a long time, perhaps the only reflectively developed understanding available in the philosophical literature—cf. Glock 2008, 220) comes to us from Alasdair MacIntyre. According to MacIntyre, a “tradition” is “an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute the tradition” (MacIntyre 1984, 222) or, more specifically:

An argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition … and those internal, interpretive debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.

(MacIntyre 1988, 12, my emphasis)

While MacIntyre did not propose these as descriptions of specifically philosophical traditions, they apply to such traditions as well. Specifically, MacIntyre’s insight that traditions characteristically progress via “internal, interpretive debates” concerning how best to understand their fundamental agreements fits well with Moritz Schlick’s observation that

Every philosophical movement is defined by the principles it regards as fundamental, and to which it constantly refers in its arguments. In the course of historical development, the principles are not apt to remain unaltered, whether it be that they acquire new formulations, and come to be extended or restricted, or that even their meaning gradually undergoes noticeable modifications.

(Schlick 1932, 259)¹

Schlick uses the term “movement” rather than “tradition,” but whatever else a movement may be,² it is the sort of thing that can develop into a tradition. Thus, what Schlick seems to be getting at is that philosophical traditions characteristically begin as socially embodied schools of thought, with members united in agreement over some set of philosophical views or ideas (Schlick’s “fundamental principles,” Macintyre’s “fundamental agreements”). But then, as adherents think ever more deeply about those views, questions about them arise. To these, differing answers emerge, and along with them an “in-house debate” about what the school’s views really presuppose, or entail, or mean (etc.). Thus it is that philosophical schools and movements naturally ramify, by means of interpretation and reinterpretation, into traditions characterized by less ideational uniformity than the original school itself—retaining a core of fundamental, theoretical agreement but exhibiting disagreement over the further details. Thus the history of a tradition will always be an interpretive history—a history shaped by interpretation.

There is, of course, more to a philosophical tradition than its fundamental principles. It is around such principles that a philosophical tradition (or school, or movement) comes into being and develops, but a great deal of what arranges itself around the principles may become, along with them, co-constitutive of, if not also co-definitive of, the tradition. For instance, the principles will be conceived by figures who will count as the tradition’s founders and will be endorsed by other figures who will count as its members. Some of these will become leaders within the tradition, either alongside the founders or in the ensuing generations, and will stand out from the rest of the membership as exemplars of what it means to be a member of the tradition. The principles will be stated, explained, examined, questioned, defended, adapted, and, indeed, interpreted, in texts, some of which will come to form the central canon of the tradition. The membership may engage in certain practices, such as holding an annual meeting, or it may establish certain institutions, such as schools or journals or a press, to facilitate the interpretive debates by which their tradition progresses, so that the tradition itself comes to be characterized by those practices. And all of this, happening in space and time, will confer upon the tradition spatial (geographical) and temporal boundaries. Thus, for almost any philosophical tradition, we will in principle be able to identify it not only by its fundamental theoretical commitments but also by its founders, its most important members and texts, its characteristic practices, the times and places in which it originated, thrived, languished, and so on. But this does nothing to undermine MacIntyre’s insight that traditions develop hermeneutically. Rather, all these additional features may become fodder for interpretation alongside the fundamental principles. (For instance, as we shall see, there is currently quite a debate over just who the founders of analytic philosophy really are.)

So it is not unusual that a philosophical tradition should, to a large degree, be shaped by interpretation. What is surprising, however, is that analytic philosophy appears to have been not merely shaped, but created, by interpretation—and a misinterpretation at that. As traditionally understood, analytic philosophy originated around the turn of the 20th century in the work of Moore and Russell, in a revolutionary break not only from British idealism but from traditional philosophy on the whole. This break was predicated upon the view that a novel philosophical method—namely, linguistic analysis—had been developed, and upon corresponding methodological and metaphilosophical views to the effect that linguistic analysis was the uniquely correct method for philosophy, and that philosophy, insofar as it is a legitimate enterprise, is itself nothing more than the analysis of language. This “traditional conception” of analytic philosophy is represented in a number of works from the early 1930s through at least the early 1970s.³ It turns out, however, that the traditional conception is radically false. As historians of analytic philosophy have been pointing out since at least the 1990s, neither Moore nor Russell—nor, for that matter, Frege—endorsed the linguistic view of philosophy or of philosophical analysis.⁴ Thus, analytic philosophy has never exhibited fundamental agreements about fundamental principles, not at any time, and certainly not over time.

How, then, did it come to be believed that a philosophical tradition (or school, or movement) corresponding to the traditional conception of analytic philosophy existed in the first place? My view, which I have argued for extensively elsewhere (Preston 2007), is that this was the result of misinterpreting Moore and Russell (and later Frege) in ways that created an “illusion of unity.” Others have noted the role of illusory phenomena in the history of analytic philosophy. As early as 1958, Geoffrey Warnock wrote of the analytic tradition as having generated a “revolutionary illusion” (Warnock 1958, 1). More recently Michael Beaney has used the term “creation myth” to characterize the once-popular view that analytic philosophy was born in the linguistic turn (Beaney 2013a, 23). He borrows the term from Gerrard, who used it to characterize the view that analytic philosophy was born in a revolt against idealism (Gerrard 1997, 40). And more recently still, Erich Reck has used the term “philosophical legend”—“a (quasi-)historical tale that is not examined critically but shapes people’s philosophical outlook”—to name a recurring phenomenon in the history of analytic philosophy (Reck 2013, 7). So the view that illusions of various sorts have shaped the analytic self-image, and thereby the analytic tradition, is perhaps not terribly controversial. What is controversial, however, is my proposal that the “illusion of unity” was essential to the formation of the analytic tradition—that, without it, there would have been no adequate reason to treat those now regarded as analytic philosophers as belonging together in a group, and that therefore the category “analytic philosophy” would not have emerged (at least not as it actually did). Thus, on my view, the analytic tradition owes its very existence to a set of interpretations, which happened to be misinterpretations. It was born neither in a revolt against British Idealism nor in the logical innovations of Frege and Russell but in an episode of misguided collective-intentionality, falsely representing Moore and Russell, and later Frege, as endorsing a linguistic view of philosophy. The analytic tradition was, in short, interpreted into existence.

Admittedly, this is an odd view, and it should not be presumed that any of the contributors to this volume agree with it. Of course, one can reject my proposal that analytic philosophy was created by interpretation and still accept that it has been powerfully shaped by interpretation (see Glock, this volume)—as it clearly has been. And this has implications for how analytic philosophy ought to be understood. For instance, Michael Beaney’s salutary observation that “the only way to answer the question ‘What is analytic philosophy?’ is to provide a history of the analytic tradition” (Beaney 2013a, 29) does not go far enough. To fully answer this question requires that we provide a history of the interpretations—including the misinterpretations—that have shaped the analytic tradition.

The present volume makes a beginning (and only a beginning) of this task. Each of the following chapters examines one or more of the main tradition-shaping interpretations of analytic philosophy. Some focus on the way an interpretation of a part—a particular text, say—has affected our understanding of the whole. Others focus on the way an interpretation of the whole has influenced interpretations of the parts. Some do both. And a few consider ways in which new interpretations might prove to be tradition-shaping as analytic philosophy moves into the future. In the remainder of this introduction I will survey each of the contributions, noting important connections where possible, and highlighting the significance of the interpretations they explore for our understanding of analytic philosophy.

*

Two popular beliefs about analytic philosophy are that (i) it originated in a revolt against Idealism and (ii) it originated in a confluence of the work of Moore, Russell and Frege. But the exact nature of this confluence is very much open to interpretation, and different interpretations will have different implications for our understanding of the analytic tradition as a whole. In chapter 2, Peter Hylton observes that Frege was not concerned about Idealism the way Moore and Russell were, and hence that the revolt against Idealism was a purely British phenomenon. What’s more, it was a revolt against a distinctive, British form of Idealism rooted in a distinctive, British interpretation of Kant that read him through the lens of Hegel. This interpretation emphasized the ontological and Idealistic dimensions of Kant’s thought, internally linking mind and world, knower and known. In Germany, by contrast, Kant had come to be read very differently, first as a naturalistic philosopher, and later as scientific thinker more concerned with epistemology than ontology. For this reason, Frege did not perceive Kantian thought to be the threat that Moore did. Frege’s main adversary was not Idealism, but the naturalism and associated psychologism that he saw as threatening the objectivity of knowledge. It was therefore a very particular interpretation of Kant that stimulated Moore to initiate the “revolt against Idealism” which, later, came to be seen as the birth of analytic philosophy. Consequently, this interpretation of Kant stands as a tradition-shaping interpretation for analytic philosophy. Indeed, most of Hylton’s essay is given to showing how some of early analytic philosophy’s most characteristic and distinctive views originated as alternatives, not to Kant and Bradley simpliciter, but to Kant and Bradley as interpreted by Moore.

An important holistic conclusion follows from Hylton’s argument, although he does not draw it explicitly. It is that, to the extent that Frege is counted a father of analytic philosophy, along with Moore and Russell, the idea that analytic philosophy began in a revolt against post-Kantian Idealism is at best a half-truth. Scott Soames (chapter 3) takes this a step further, boldly denying that analytic philosophy originated in a self-conscious revolt against Idealism and instead locating its origins entirely in the logical, linguistic, and mathematical work of Frege and Russell. This he identifies as the first of four major stages of development concerning the role of language in the analytic tradition. The first, dominated by Frege and Russell, was characterized by attempts to create a logically perfect language, driven by the belief that such an “ideal language” would constitute a superior tool for resolving any number of philosophical problems, traditional and contemporary. The second stage saw the young Wittgenstein (of the Tractatus) and the logical positivists using “vastly oversimplified models of language … to sweep away metaphysics, normativity, and much of the traditional agenda of philosophy.”⁵ In the third stage, these oversimplifications were unmasked in different ways by ordinary language philosophers on the one hand and Quine on the other. However, their views about language were also too simplistic: Quine’s scientistic metaphilosophy foundered with his unsuccessful bid to eliminate intensionality and intentionality, while the ordinary language philosophers’ attempt to treat meaning solely in terms of use simply ignored other significant factors affecting meaning. Despite their differences, the first three stages were united in the view that linguistic analysis was central to philosophy. The fourth stage is characterized by th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1. Editor’s Introduction: Interpreting the Analytic Tradition
• 3. The Changing Role of Language in Analytic Philosophy
• 4. Russell, Ryle, and Phenomenology: An Alternative Parsing of the Ways
• 5. Some Main Problems of Moore Interpretation
• 6. Russell’s Philosophical Method: How Analytic Philosophy is Shaped By and Perpetuates Its Misinterpretation
• 7. Analyzing Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
• 8. The Later Wittgenstein
• 9. Frank Ramsey and the Entanglement of Analytic Philosophy with Pragmatism
• 10. From Scientific to Analytic: Remarks on How Logical Positivism Became a Chapter of Analytic Philosophy
• 11. Ernest Nagel’s Naturalism: A Microhistory of the American Reception of Logical Empiricism
• 12. “One of My Feet Was Still Pretty Firmly Encased in This Boot”: Behaviorism and The Concept of Mind
• 13. Quine: The Last and Greatest Scientific Philosopher
• 14. P. F. Strawson: Ordinary Language Philosophy and Descriptive Metaphysics
• 15. Austin Athwart the Tradition
• 16. Davidson’s Interpretation of Quine’s Radical Translation, and How It Helped Make Analytic Philosophy a Tradition
• 17. Dummett’s Dialectics
• 18. On the Traditionalist Conjecture
• Index