Читать книгу Race, Gender, and the History of Early Analytic Philosophy - Matt LaVine - Страница 10
Оглавление§0.0 Overview of Introduction
In this introduction, I will motivate my investigation into the connection between the history of early analytic philosophy and concerns of social justice gleaned from critical theories of race and gender by introducing representative examples of wildly varied positions on the matter from prominent members of the field. From there, like many works on the history of analytic philosophy, I will discuss what I take “analytic philosophy” to mean. In doing so, I will argue that the phrase is ambiguous between a reading on which it refers to a style or method of doing philosophy and a reading on which it refers to a social-intellectual movement, which placed great emphasis on the potential for that method to contribute to human progress. That style of doing philosophy is one which places logical and linguistic analysis at center stage. The early period of that movement (~1898–1970), which I will focus on, is broken down into five stages. Finally, I will sketch the primary argument of this book, which will involve connecting both types of analysis and all five stages to discussion of social justice.
§0.1 Contemporary Disagreements on Social Justice and the History of Analytic Philosophy
There is much to be gained by bringing together inquiry into race, gender, and social justice and inquiry into, as well as the use of, analytic philosophy. Furthermore, there is actually some significant historical precedent for this. While they may seem rather tame, I think these are of great importance and are the two primary theses I will spend the next couple hundred pages arguing for. I start here because, even though there are many philosophers today who are displaying and evidencing these facts (in fact, there is a very real sense in which I am arguing for the claim that, when understood aright, we will see the culmination of analytic philosophy up to today as Liam Kofi Bright, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Sally Haslanger, and Charles Mills),1 very few people have taken the time to say this explicitly and argue directly for it. On top of that, there are far too many voices who have been saying for far too long that there is, and/or ought to be, a significant disconnect between analytic philosophy and critical theories of race, gender, and oppression.
Going back as far as 1937, analytic champions have been characterized quite to the contrary, with Horkheimer claiming that “radical positivism . . . is connected to the existence of totalitarian states,” fascistic tyranny, and the fear of social upheaval (Glock 2008, 183). Following up on the dominance of logical empiricism, the loose conglomeration of thinkers surrounding Wittgenstein and Oxford that have come to be known as “ordinary language philosophers” have been said to be necessarily conservative in their respect for the ordinary and the common. As Toril Moi sums it up nicely, “[t]heorists from Gellner and Marcuse to Butler and Žižek accuse ordinary language philosophy of being inherently conservative or even reactionary, largely because they take this philosophy to endorse common sense” (Moi 2017, ch. 7).2 Since that time, analytic philosophy’s center has shifted to the United States and has been led by Quine and Kripke—who have said things like the political activity at Harvard in the 1960s was “mischief in the service of . . . headlong ideals” in response to which he was an “ineffectual” part of the “conservative caucus” (Quine 1985, 352) and “the intention of philosophy was never to be relevant to life.”3 This should not be taken lightly either as, for example, Soames (2003a, 2003b) has argued that Kripke is the culmination of the first century of the analytic movement in philosophy.
Views on the primary topic of this book—the relationship between analytic philosophy and social justice activism—are quite difficult to discern not just among these historical figures, but those working on that history as well. Scott Soames, for instance, in his aforementioned two-volume history of early analytic philosophy—which has become the standard text used to teach advanced undergraduates—said that “philosophy done in the analytic tradition aims at truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral and spiritual improvement” (Soames 2003a, xiv). Sally Haslanger, on the other hand, has said that a “critical analytical project,” which combines critical theories of race and gender, as well as analytic methods, is of the utmost importance (Haslanger 2012, 226–28). Hans-Johann Glock, recognizing the existence of such differing opinions, published a chapter, which investigates such wildly conflicting hypotheses as (a) that analytic philosophy is characterized by excluding all moral and political philosophy, (b) that analytic philosophy is apolitical and conservative, and (c) that analytic philosophy is liberal and progressive (Glock 2008, 179–203).
Furthermore, as Meena Krishnamurthy4 and Charles Mills (1997, 2015, 2017) have pointed out, this state of affairs is not helped by the existence of a Rawlsian Myth among the analytic mainstream that there was no important political philosophy between Mill’s death and Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Such a picture should be easily seen as extremely exclusionary as it ignores such important figures as Anna Julia Cooper, Martin Luther King Jr., Simone de Beauvoir, Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Malcolm X (just to name a few). It is so exclusionary that it even leaves out the political thought of analytic figures like Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Bertrand Russell, and Susan Stebbing. Again, this is why the primary aims of this book are to (a) weigh in on this question of the public, political, and practical goals of early analytic philosophy and (b) to investigate issues like what potential there may be for analytic work to contribute to critical theories of race and gender as well as social justice activism, why so little of such work has happened, and why the work that has happened on this front has often been forgotten or ignored. In short, the result of these investigations will be that the existence of positions as different as Haslanger and Soames can be explained by the fact that there is much potential for analytic social justice work, but this potential has all-too-rarely been realized.
§0.2 The Meaning(s) of “Analytic Philosophy”
As should already be clear, then, there is a great deal of controversy over how to understand the larger history of analytic philosophy. I think that part of this controversy actually comes from some slippage in, and disagreement about, usage of the term “analytic philosophy” itself. Given that one of the pieces of consensus that exists about analytic philosophy is that clarity has been greatly important to it, we should spend some time getting clear on the meaning of the phrase “analytic philosophy.” And, from my perspective, one of the most important things to recognize is that this term is ambiguous between multiple different readings. This, unfortunately, creates the potential for merely verbal disputes when people are debating the understanding of the larger history of analytic philosophy. That is to say, it creates the possibility that two people think they are disagreeing about the historical facts, when they are really just using the phrase “analytic philosophy” differently in their utterances. To see this, we will use a standard test for ambiguity of showing that there exist sentence types such that one token of the type is true and one token is false.
To get to such sentence types, we will begin with another piece of the small consensus that exists in the subfield of the history of analytic philosophy. Given that there is some general agreement that it is difficult to characterize the meaning(s) of “analytic philosophy,” one of the common places that meta-philosophers and historians start such discussions is simply by listing those they take to be paradigm cases of analytic philosophers. Interestingly, despite much agreement on these lists, there are some figures that have become something of standard problem cases as well. In particular, Gottlob Frege is squarely in the extension for some and squarely out of the extension of “analytic philosopher” for others. As representative examples, Schwartz says, “I do not consider [Frege, Godel, Tarski, Turing, and Chomsky] to be analytic philosophers” (Schwartz 2012, 7), but Klement that “Frege has become so influential that it is almost unthinkable that any reasonably comprehensive history [of analytic philosophy] would omit him” (Klement 2014).
Interestingly, while Schwartz does not include Frege as an analytic philosopher, he agrees with Klement on the influence of Frege—discussing him on no fewer than forty-six pages, more than Anscombe, Austin, and Ayer, among others. So, in a certain sense, they agree on the facts of the matter with respect to Frege and analytic philosophy. They simply disagree on whether or not those facts make it the case that “analytic philosophy” applies to Frege’s work. One reason for this could be that they are using the term “analytic philosophy” with different meanings and one makes the following sentence true, while the other makes it false:
(1) “Gottlob Frege was an analytic philosopher.”
Of course, another explanation may be that they are after one and the same concept with “analytic philosophy,” they simply have different conceptions of it, which make them disagree on whether or not Frege belongs in the extension. A third could be that, again, they are after the same meaning, they are just working with a vague meaning.
To see a related example that I think speaks against these alternative explanations, consider the sentence:
(2) “Bernard Bolzano was an analytic philosopher.”
Prior to the work of Haller (1988), Dummett (1993), and Smith (1994), very few would have thought this was anything but clearly false. Since the groundbreaking work of Lapointe (2011), many more tend to think that it is true. This is because Lapointe makes clear that Bolzano “anticipated ground-breaking ideas such as the (Fregean) distinction between sense and reference, the (Tarskian) notion of logical consequence and the (Quinean) definition of logical truth” (Lapointe 2011, 6). As she argued several years later, these and “other Bolzanian theoretical innovations . . . warrant his inclusion in the analytical tradition” (Lapointe 2014, 96). That said, in Michael Beaney’s editor’s foreword to Lapointe’s book, he says that “[d]espite these similarities, however, Bolzano had no direct influence on any of the acknowledged founders of analytic philosophy.” So, rather than being a part of the analytic tradition, “[Bolzano’s] philosophy—like his life—can be seen as offering a bridge between Kant’s seminal work and the birth of analytic philosophy” (Lapointe 2011, ix—Beaney’s foreword).
Here, I think Lapointe claims that (2) is true and Beaney that it’s false because they are using the term “analytic philosophy” differently. For Lapointe, that “analytic philosopher” applies to Bolzano has to do with the way he did philosophy—namely, that he anticipated the use of tools from the philosophy of language (e.g., the sense/reference distinction) and logic (e.g., logical consequence and truth). For Beaney, he does not disagree with respect to Bolzano’s role in the development of these linguistic and logical innovations, but rather suggests that “analytic philosopher” fails to apply to Bolzano because of a lack of direct lines of influence to paradigmatic analytic philosophers. In the first case, “analytic philosophy” seems to be connected to a particular philosophical method—one that places the philosophy of language and logic at the center of philosophizing. This would be natural as the linguistic turn, an event that made philosophy of language first philosophy, has been connected to analytic philosophy for a long time. Furthermore, the use of, and/or response to, the “new logic” of the nineteenth century, which superseded classical logic, has long been thought to be a defining feature of analytic philosophy. In the second case, though, “analytic philosophy” is not connected to just the use of a certain philosophical method (or methods). Rather, one needs to be connected to that particular movement within the history of philosophy, which was founded by thinkers like G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein to count as an analytic philosopher.
Here we have the basis for two different meanings, which make good on the claim that “analytic philosophy” is an ambiguous term. On the one hand, it is sometimes used to refer to a style or method of doing philosophy, one which focuses on philosophy of language and logic. This is what is meant when people talk of philosophical analysis, analytic methods, and the like. This is also how it can be seriously said that “Leibniz would be the first modern analytical philosopher” (Sebestik 1997, 34). On the other hand, “analytic philosophy” is sometimes used to refer to a specific movement within the larger history of philosophy, which is defined by lines of direct influence emanating out from thinkers like Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein. This is what is meant when people talk of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, the analytic/continental divide, and the like. One subsidiary goal of the book is to explain why this ambiguity has been missed5—namely, one of the defining features of the early phase of that social-intellectual movement was a great hope for that method in its relation to philosophical/scientific progress and their connection to human progress.
For now, I provide just a few more examples of sentences that speak toward this claimed ambiguity. For instance, consider the following two sentences:
(3) “Analytic philosophy may have started coming to an end in the 1970’s.”
(4) “Analytic philosophy requires logical and/or linguistic analysis.”
While many philosophers today would be very surprised to hear somebody utter (3), something like it has been put forth by a number of prominent philosophers, whose work was collected together for an edited volume by John Rajchman and Cornel West with the suggestive title, Post-analytic Philosophy (Rajchman & West 1985). A number of these post-analytic philosophers come very close to something like (3) with thoughts such as “I think that analytic philosophy culminates in Quine, the later Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Davidson—which is to say that it transcends and cancels itself” (Rorty 1982, xviii) and “at the very moment when analytical philosophy is recognized as the ‘dominant movement’ in world philosophy, analytical philosophy has come to the end of its own project—the dead end, not the completion” (Putnam 1985, 28). Again, I claim that the explanation for this disagreement is that we have a merely verbal dispute. Those focusing on a potential truth expressed by (3) are noticing the fact that something significant in analytic philosophy—the historical movement—changed in the early 1970s, while those denying (3) are focusing on the fact that not much about the use of analytic philosophy—the method—changed here.
Something similar goes on with (4), as precisely how seriously to take, or how to understand, the “analysis” that is cognate to “analytic philosophy” has also been a point of contention. As Glock has argued, “many contemporary explanations of what analytic philosophy is are curiously silent on the issue of analysis. Yet the idea of putting the idea of analysis back into the definition of analytic philosophy is hardly far-fetched” (Glock 2008, 153). Summarizing the state of this debate, he considers Russellian, decompositional, logical, connective, constructive, and Quinean analysis, among others. Ultimately, he concludes that “while weightier and more specific notions of analysis no longer cover the whole range of analytic philosophy, the less demanding and wider notions are too indiscriminating” (Glock 2008, 159–60). On the other hand, the aptly titled textbook Philosophical Analysis: An Introduction to Its Language and Techniques—which was popular enough to go through three editions and multiple printings—set out to “provide the materials for a program of familiarization with the language and techniques of analytic philosophy” by introducing students to logical analysis, linguistic analysis, and the analytic/synthetic distinction (Gorovitz et al. 1979, ix). Hopefully my next move has become clear—there is no real disagreement here. Rather, (4) is true when “analytic philosophy” expresses a method and false when “analytic philosophy” expresses something about a particular historical movement.
§0.3 The Progression of Analytic Philosophy—the Five-Stage Picture
Given that this book is on social justice and the history of analytic philosophy, and that the main part of the book will involve a series of chapters connecting each of the stages of early analytic philosophy to concerns of justice and oppression, it will be important to give a picture of the way I see the development of early analytic philosophy, the historical movement. As my continued use of “early” when talking about the history of analytic philosophy should make clear, I take there to be multiple phases of analytic philosophy. As mentioned earlier, there is a significant prehistory that culminates in the beginning of the analytic movement by 1898. From there, I split the first ~100 years of the analytic movement into the early analytic period (1898–1970) and the middle analytic period (1970–1995). This distinction is justified by the weight given to the new directions in speculative metaphysics and grand normative theory that Kripke and Rawls are taken to have initiated around 1970 with Naming and Necessity and A Theory of Justice, respectively. In addition to (roughly) 1970 marking a rise in new trends, it also marks the culmination of various stories from the analytic tale. Around this time, (a) Paul Grice brought ordinary language philosophy down from the inside, (b) Marcus, Prior, Kripke, and others completed the modern logical revolution, and (c) Russell and Carnap died, just to name a few. This second phase, the middle analytic period, then comes to an end around 1995. By this point, Kripke and Rawls have published all of their most important works. This also marks the time at which there began to be a distinct subdiscipline of the history of analytic philosophy with publications like Coffa (1991), Dummett (1993), Hacker (1996), and Friedman (1999), followed by the formation of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy, the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, and Palgrave Macmillan’s History of Analytic Philosophy series.
After breaking the history of analytic philosophy into the early period (1898–1970), the middle period (1970–1995), and the contemporary period (1995–present), the early period is further broken down into five stages. These five stages are characterized by the emergence of different torchbearers and a group of problems they focused on, which served as a background for debates. First, Moore and Russell led their critical revolt against British idealism (1898–1914), which, in the second stage, was built into positive, large-scale philosophical systems with Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s logical atomisms (1914–1926). The third stage then consisted of a less-than-heated debate between different evolutions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—logical empiricism and Cambridge analysis (1926–1940). Influenced by them, but distancing themselves from both groups, was the ordinary language philosophy of 1940–1960. This early period was then brought to a close with a decade of debate and fragmentation of the analytic movement caused, in large part, by Quine’s questioning of long-held principles before new paradigms were established by Kripke and Rawls.
With respect to this first stage, very little of what I have said about it so far is controversial. Stephen Schwartz, for example, starts his history of analytic philosophy with a chapter on Russell and Moore, arguing that “Bertrand Russell—aristocrat (3rd Earl Russell), anti-war activist, prolific writer, and brilliant philosopher and mathematician—is the father of Anglo-American analytic philosophy” (Schwartz 2012, 8) and “Russell’s wider outlook was shaped with his contact with G. E. Moore—a philosopher only slightly less significant in creating analytic philosophy than Russell himself” (Schwartz 2012, 27). Scott Soames’ history of analytic philosophy concurs, beginning with part one on Moore and part two on Russell (Soames 2003a). Ayer, too, begins his history of twentieth-century philosophy with a chapter on Russell and Moore entitled “the revolt from Hegel” (Ayer 1982, 19). Glock can be added to the chorus as well, saying “their revolt against [British idealism] marked a decisive moment in the emergence of analytic philosophy” (Glock 2008, 31).
Furthermore, an 1898 revolt against British idealism as a starting point for this process is rather standard as well. P. M. S. Hacker’s history of (Wittgenstein’s role in) analytic philosophy says both that “twentieth-century analytic philosophy has its twofold root in Cambridge at the turn of the century in the work of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell” (Hacker 1996, 5) and “Moore’s revolt against idealism began with his 1898 dissertation” (Hacker 1996, 6). In fact, 1898 as a significant date for this decisive step comes from Russell himself as well. In his intellectual autobiography, Russell says “it was towards the end of 1898 that Moore and I rebelled against both Kant and Hegel” (Russell 1959, 42). Hence, all we really need to explain here is the choice of 1914 as the time of transition between the first and second stages of early analytic philosophy.
This second stage of early analytic philosophy spanned roughly 1914–1926, or the early mid-1910s to the mid–late 1920s anyway. As mentioned earlier, this time was marked by the development and dominance of Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s logical atomisms. Again, claiming that this development was that which followed Moore and Russell’s move away from idealism is not particularly controversial, either. Part 2 of Soames (2003a) ends with a chapter on Russell’s logical atomism and part 3 is on Wittgenstein’s atomism developed in the Tractatus. Glock also follows up his section on the rebellion against idealism with a section on “the linguistic turn,” which claims this came to fruition in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and discusses that “a similar type of logical atomism was developed by Russell” (Glock 2008, 34–35). So, evidence of the significance of 1914 comes from multiple fronts:
(1) Russell published his first systematic work involving an exposition of logical atomism, Our Knowledge of the External World, in 1914.
(2) Because of this, Volume 8 of Russell’s collected papers—the one focusing on logical atomism—begins with his published works of 1914.
(3) The background for the development of Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s logical atomisms was Wittgenstein’s time as a student of Russell’s, which lasted through 1912 and 1913.
(4) Wittgenstein’s notebooks that contain the beginning of his work, which would eventually become the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—his major exposition of logical atomism, begin in 1914. Cf. “The fruits of his seven years’ labour were presented in his first masterpiece, the Tractatus (1921)” (Hacker 1996, 22).
Yet again, there is not much controversy about placing the heyday of logical empiricism as our next stage. Soames (2003a) follows up part 3 on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus with part 4 on logical positivism. Schwartz (2012) follows up a discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus with sections dedicated to “The Vienna Circle and their Allies” and “The Elimination of Metaphysics and the Logical Positivist Program.” Coffa (1991) completes part I with a chapter on the Tractatus and then moves to part II on “Vienna, 1925–1935.” Ayer (1982), too, has a section on logical empiricists—Schlick, Neurath, and Carnap—immediately after his section on the Tractatus.
What is likely more controversial is adding the Cambridge analysts to this time period. That said, it is not without some prominent backing. After introducing logical empiricism, Glock’s historical development discusses Frank Ramsey, Susan Stebbing, and John Wisdom, saying “[m]eanwhile in Cambridge there emerged a new generation of logical analysts” (Glock 2008, 39). Hacker, too, has a separate chapter from the one on the influence of the Tractatus on the logical empiricists of the Vienna Circle. This subsequent chapter is on the Tractatus’ influence on “the younger generation of Cambridge philosophers” where “its influence was very different in Britain, merging, as it did, with the Cambridge styles of analysis, in contrast with the Machian heritage of the philosophers of the Vienna Circle” (Hacker 1996, 67). While these Cambridge analysts are certainly not discussed today as much as the logical empiricists, I agree with Glock and Hacker that we do a disservice to the history if we leave them out. While Stebbing’s influence will be discussed much more in chapters 3 and 5, we can now point out that she served on the board of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, introduced logical empiricism to the English-speaking world, and gave the first clear account of the relationships between the views of the logical empiricists and Cambridge analysts.
Furthermore, evidence of the significance of 1926 as a completion point for Stage 2 of logical atomism and the beginning of Stage 3 of logical empiricism and Cambridge analysis also comes in multiple forms:
(1) Though the Schlick-led incarnation of the Vienna Circle had been meeting for several years by this point, it was in 1926 that Rudolf Carnap—the intellectual figurehead of logical empiricism and its influence on the larger history of analytic philosophy—joined.
(2) The Vienna Circle read the Tractatus together page by page through much of the whole calendar year of 1926.
(3) This was also the year that Schlick would convince Wittgenstein to start scheduling meetings with a subset of the Vienna Circle including Waismann, Carnap, Herbert Feigl, and Maria Kasper-Feigl, which would last in some form from 1927 until 1935.
(4) Russell’s work also took a different direction by this point, as indicated by Volume 9 of Russell’s collected papers applying his logical atomism to matters on language, mind, and matter ending in 1926 and the next volume being entitled A Fresh Look at Empiricism.
(5) After not publishing more than five papers in any particular year prior to that, Stebbing’s career took a significant turn with at least a dozen publications in 1926 (Chapman 2013, 202–3).
(6) Ramsey was appointed university lecturer in mathematics at King’s College, Cambridge in 1926.
(7) Braithwaite earned his highest degree, an MA, from King’s College in 1926.
Hence, while it can certainly be challenged, there is at least prima facie reason to treat 1926 as a time of transition for the analytic movement.
Going back to more of a consensus picture, there is little controversial about placing ordinary language philosophy at the center of the analytic movement following logical empiricism. Soames (2003b) follows up his discussion of logical positivism and Quinean reactions to it from Soames (2003a) with a part on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and three parts on ordinary language philosophy (including its demise under Grice). Schwartz (2012), too, goes to chapters on “Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy and Later Wittgenstein” and “Responses to Ordinary Language Philosophy” after chapters on logical positivism and responses to it. Hence, we need only say a bit about the choice of 1940 and 1960 as the transition points from logical empiricism/Cambridge analysis to ordinary language philosophy and from ordinary language philosophy to the decade of debate, fragmentation, and turmoil.
(1) Many members of the Vienna Circle had been forced to leave the European continent by 1940 as a result of Nazi activities—Neurath and Reidemeister fled to England in 1940, Kurt Godel reached the United States in 1940, Rose Rand emigrated to London in 1939, Phillip Frank made it to the United States in 1938, Friedrich Waismann to England in 1937, and Rudolf Carnap to the United States in 1935, among others (Uebel 2016).
(2) As a result, the last congresses on scientific philosophy were held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1939 and Chicago in 1941.
(3) Stebbing’s major works, Thinking to Some Purpose and Ideals and Illusions, were published in 1939 and 1941, respectively.
(4) Wittgenstein was elected to Moore’s chair in philosophy in 1939.
(5) J. L. Austin’s first publication to focus on meanings and words comes out in 1939 in a symposium on “Are There A Priori Concepts?”
As for the choice of 1960 as the transition point between the fourth stage led by ordinary language philosophy and a fifth stage where there was no single story, school, or set of problems clearly leading the analytic movement, this is much more arbitrary. That said, this is partly a result of the fragmentation of this era itself. Rather than a group like the Vienna Circle setting the institutional tone, as was done in earlier stages, this fifth stage saw a number of distinct and significant threads. There was a revival in traditional ethical theorizing from G. E. M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and R. M. Hare, which would ultimately lead to the applied ethics of thinkers like James Rachels, Peter Singer, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. During this time, the significance of modal and intensional logics was intensely investigated by Saul Kripke, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Richard Montague, and A. N. Prior. Finally, as the center of analytic philosophy shifted to the United States the traditions of pragmatism and naturalism were explored, and used to criticize some common themes of stages 3 and 4, in the works of W. V. O. Quine, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, Nicholas Rescher, Susan Haack, Cornel West, and Cheryl Misak. Thus, given this complication, I will have to leave full discussion of the choice of 1960 to chapter 7 on Stage 5.
§0.4 Preliminary Sketch of the Book
With my understandings of the meanings of “analytic philosophy” and of the outline of the history of early analytic philosophy sketched, we are now in a position to sketch the main argument of this book. As was mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, my primary thesis is that there is much to be gained by bringing together inquiry into critical theories of race and gender and inquiry into, as well as the use of, analytic philosophy. That is, because of the entrenched nature of a belief in a disconnect between analytic philosophy and matters of necessity to “moral and spiritual improvement” such as racial and gender justice and oppression, the book has the modest, but I believe important, goal of showing that there is practical value to exploring the connections between them.
Now that we have discussed the fact that I believe there to be at least two relatively distinct meanings of “analytic philosophy,” we can specify that I will argue that this primary conclusion is true on both readings of the term. That is to say, I will try to give reasons to believe (a) that there is much to be gained by bringing together inquiry involving matters of race, gender, and analytic philosophy, the method of philosophizing which emphasizes the centrality of the philosophy of language and logic and (b) that there is much to be gained by bringing together inquiry involving matters of race, gender, and analytic philosophy, the historical movement in the discipline of philosophy. Furthermore, I will argue for both disambiguations of this thesis with specific examples, which directly show something gained for our understanding of social justice issues, for our understanding of analytic philosophy, or both in some cases. More specifically, I will focus on arguing for the historical claim that many early analytic philosophers intended for their work to be public and political in nature, while trying to make good on this intention by showing how analytic thought can be useful for work on social justice issues of contemporary concern.
Given that we have two different readings of the primary thesis, I will argue for them in two separate sections. The first will be dedicated to the primary thesis on the philosophical method reading of “analytic philosophy” and the second to the historical movement reading of “analytic philosophy.” Since the method I associate with the words “analytic philosophy” focuses on the philosophy of language and on logic, this first section will include one chapter on each. In particular, chapter 1 will be on a specific example showing how we can be better practitioners of analytic philosophy and understand its history in a more just fashion by utilizing tools from analytic philosophy of language concerning how social identity influences the reception of certain speech acts. More specifically, we will use Rebecca Kukla (2014)’s notion of discursive injustice to weigh in on the (in)famous debate between Scott Soames and Quentin Smith over who deserves initial credit for the so-called “new theory of reference”—Ruth Barcan Marcus or Saul Kripke. Slightly oversimplifying, I will argue for something of a compromise position where, rather than Kripke being guilty of plagiarizing Marcus, the entire discipline of philosophy is guilty of gendered discursive injustice with respect to the reception of Marcus’ philosophical work. In chapter 2, I turn to arguing that we do not have a proper understanding of logic if we do not recognize its ethical, political, and practical significance. Here, I build off of John Corcoran’s “The Inseparability of Logic and Ethics” as well as some of Marcus’ and Arthur Prior’s work connecting logic and ethics that we might hopefully spend more time on if we had taken some of the historical lessons from chapter 1.
After providing specific examples of how the philosophy of language and logic can be importantly helpful for inquiry into ethical and political matters, the next section will focus on how the early phase of the historical movement of analytic philosophy can be similarly connected to matters of race, gender, and justice. Here, I will continue the pattern of structuring the argument around specific examples showing particular contributions to each of these dialectics by bringing together inquiry into critical theories of race, gender, justice, and oppression and inquiry into the history of analytic philosophy. As a reminder, I structure the history of analytic philosophy into the early phase of 1898–1970, the middle phase of 1970–1995, and the contemporary phase of 1995–present. From there, I break down the early phase into the following five stages:
[S1] 1898–1914: Moore, Russell, and the rebellion against British idealism
[S2] 1914–1926: Wittgenstein, Russell, and logical atomism
[S3] 1926–1940: Logical empiricism and Cambridge analysis
[S4] 1940–1960: Ordinary language philosophy
[S5] 1960–1970: Naturalism, modal logic, and traditional ethical theorizing.
Again, because the feeling is that such a thing cannot be done, this section will primarily consist of direct and individual case studies showing that we can shed some light on debates over, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, the silencing of women, and ignorance of contributions of, and injustices faced by, people with marginalized social identities by bringing these debates into contact with thought and trends from each stage of the early analytic movement. So as to avoid the rebuttal that these examples are cherry-picked and do not show anything of general interest, attention will be paid to indisputably central trends from each of the five stages of early analytic philosophy. In particular, I will discuss issues of race and gender in relation to:
[S1] The focus on common sense from the first uncontroversial analytic philosophers, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. In particular, I will look at one common way of understanding “common sense” and how standard problems from judgment aggregation theory show that sets of beliefs meeting this criterion are likely to be inconsistent and standard work from sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and critical theorists show that giving a place of privilege to such beliefs is likely to perpetuate problematic biases, prejudices, and oppressive ignorance.
[S2] The critique of metaphysics and ethics from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. More specifically, I argue that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus started a trend of viewing metaphysics as almost like a disguised form of ethics. I illustrate this general view, and problems with it, by showing how it can be applied to Liam Kofi Bright (2017)’s account of the logical empiricists’ views on the metaphysics of race (voluntarist racial eliminativism) and their ethico-political motivations (ending racist divisiveness and promoting internationalist politics).
[S3] The verification principle and scientific worldview of the logical empiricists. I argue that these pieces of the overarching framework of the logical empiricists had ethical and political motivations throughout. In doing so, I enter into a debate involving Thomas Uebel, Sarah Richardson, and Amy Wuest over whether or not the logical empiricists had a “political philosophy of science.” I ultimately argue that recent work from Liam Kofi Bright and Catarina Dutilh Novaes give us good reason to think they did. This is also shown to be less of an aberration than it might have seemed as other major figures of this stage who were only associates of the logical empiricists (n.b. Susan Stebbing) and those who set themselves in direct opposition to them (n.b. Karl Popper) had similarly political philosophies of science.
[S4] The ordinary language philosophy of H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin. I argue here for the claim that trying to replace, or even respond to, someone’s saying “Black lives matter” with someone’s saying “all lives matter” is mistaken and misdirected. Furthermore, I will show how we can utilize Paul Grice’s logic of conversation to build a strong case for this thesis and Luvell Anderson’s work to show that this is not a unique case.
[S5] The naturalism of W. V. O. Quine and the development of modal logic, which made Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity possible. In particular, I will discuss applications of Quinean methodology to issues of race and gender by Charles Mills and Sally Haslanger, as well as how we can see these two as more Quinean than Quine sometimes was. In particular, their use of social science and moral theory surrounding race and gender utilizes the consequences of a naturalized epistemology and ontology more consistently than Quine’s own work.
Before moving on, this sketch of my argument provides another opportunity to recognize my own standpoint as a privileged white man writing about, and for the sake of, people with marginalized and oppressed social identities. Again, I recognize there are many potential pitfalls in doing so and that I must take, for example, Kristie Dotson’s “caution that when addressing and identifying forms of epistemic oppression one needs to endeavor not to perpetuate epistemic oppression” (Dotson 2012, 24). This sketch begins to make clear some of what I will use to limit the hindrances that inevitably come along with a standpoint like my own. In particular, as the references to work I will engage show, I will be building off of the work of thinkers whose standpoints give them more direct access to the phenomena of racial and gender oppression throughout. Furthermore, I will consistently be looking to come up with suggestions for constraints to be put on the types of engagements I am encouraging—constraints which hopefully limit the potential of hegemonic standpoints to infect analytic philosophizing. That said, I hope that my readers will not hesitate to point out those places where I have failed on these fronts.
§0.5 Previewing the Rest of the Book
As has been alluded to, the main themes of this book will be the history of early analytic philosophy, critical theories of race and gender, the philosophy of language, and logic. Put in relation to these themes, the goals are to investigate what potential there is for logical and linguistic analysis to contribute to scholarship and activism on race and gender, as well as whether or not there is precedent for such work in the history of analytic philosophy. After going through such investigations, we will find evidence for the following subsidiary theses—(a) analytic philosophy should be used to contribute to understanding and eradicating oppression and injustice—the book primarily focusing on racial and gender oppression, but occasionally discussing sexuality, disability, religion, and class, (b) at each stage of early analytic philosophy, there was a significant body of work which was motivated by and/or easily lends itself to such work and, finally, (c) this has been missed because the analytic movement went from a revolutionary to a hegemonic tradition—occupying this position of power in society along with several other trends helping it to develop privileged, dominant tendencies that we find all over power structures in modern western society.
Summing things up in terms of a structure to integrate these primary themes and theses, the nine chapters of the book can be broken down into a four-step progression. This introduction was intended to present the topics (the history of early analytic philosophy and critical theories of race and gender), the background which makes this a worthwhile choice of topics (the extremely varied positions on the relationship, the existence of injustices within the discipline, the public perception of philosophy), and the way I conceive of the methodology and history of early analytic philosophy, which will serve as a framework for the rest of the book (a commitment to the centrality of the philosophy of language and logic to the practice of philosophy, the ability to be broken down into five rough and overlapping stages). The first and second chapters investigate ways in which we can connect the main tools of analytic methodology—the philosophy of language and logic—to social, public, and ethical matters. The third through seventh chapters of the book then go stage by stage through early analytic philosophy, connecting some main trend from each to issues of practical importance involving race and gender such as inclusive discursive practices and the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, the conclusion ends with some potential roadblocks to a more just, critical, and radical form of analytic philosophy, as well as avenues for further investigation of these matters.
NOTES
1. I mean this in the sense in which there is something true in saying “Hacker (1996)’s history has Wittgenstein as the culmination of analytic philosophy” or “Soames (2003a, 2003b)’s history has Kripke as the culmination of analytic philosophy.” While this is not quite right, it has something to do with saying the best way to tell a history of analytic philosophy, which allows you to get the most combined historical accuracy and theoretical insight is with the culminating philosopher as protagonist. In this way, I think that the best way to tell a history of analytic philosophy, which rates highest with respect to a combination of historical accuracy, theoretical insight, and political expediency is with Bright, Dutilh Novaes, Haslanger, and Mills as protagonists.
2. This summary, which can be found in her abstract for chapter 7 at https://chicago.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7208/chicago/9780226464589.001.0001/upso-9780226464305-chapter-008, is far from an exaggeration as well. As Moi later points out, Gellner says that ordinary language philosophy and/or common sense “is conservative in the values which it in fact insinuates” (Gellner 1959, 296), Marcuse that “[i]t leaves the established reality untouched; it abhors transgression” (Marcuse 1964, 173), Butler that it supports “nefarious ideologies” (Butler 1999), and Žižek concurs that rather than supporting a “non-ideological common-sense form of life” this type of philosophy supports “the spontaneously accepted background which is ideology par excellence” (Žižek 2009, 21). Moi rightly argues that there is a significantly problematic elitism built into these responses where “[b]ecause they trust the ordinary, and believe that perfectly ordinary people are at least as capable as philosophers of making relevant and useful distinctions, Marcuse assumes that Wittgenstein and Austin must be marching in lockstep with dominant ideology” (Moi 2017, 152).
3. This Kripke quote and ones similar to it can be found in his interview with Andreas Saugstad, “Saul Kripke, Genius Logician,” accessed June 7, 2019, http://bolesblogs.com/2001/02/25/saul-kripke-genius-logician/.
4. Krishnamurthy’s piece “Decolonizing Analytic Political Philosophy” can be found on her blog at https://politicalphilosopher.net/2016/06/03/meenakrishnamurthy/, accessed June 7, 2019.
5. It should be noted that, while I think this has not been generally accepted, it is certainly not absent from prominent discussions, either. Hacker, for example, seems to be implicitly recognizing this when he says both that “in a loose sense, one might say that all, or the bulk of, philosophy is analytic” (Hacker 1996, 3) and “one (Russellian) root of this new school might be denominated ‘logico-analytic philosophy’ . . . the other (Moorean) root might be termed ‘conceptual analysis’” (Hacker 1996, 4).
