Post-analytic Philosophy?

i) Introduction

ii) Objective Truth?

iii) Philosophy Must Be Political?

iv) Richard Rorty

The term 'post-analytic philosophy' was first used in the mid-1980s. At that time it referred to those philosophers who were indebted to analytic philosophy, but who, nonetheless, believed that they'd moved on from it (for whatever reasons).

The term seems, prima facie, odd. After all, how can philosophers be 'post'- or anti-analysis? Surely even most examples of post-analytic philosophy will contain analyses of sorts. (This isn't necessarily to say that philosophy must consist entirely of analysis.)

Thus, the term must instead refer to the tradition (in a broad sense) of analytic philosophy. But which aspects of that tradition? Which particular philosophers? Did all analytic philosophers have an philosophical essence in common? And let's not forget that philosophical analysis occurred well before the analytic tradition got under way. (What is it that Hume, Hobbes, Aquinas, etc. did if it wasn't - at least in part - analysis?)

The above are all problems which, to some extent, subside once the history and use of the term 'post-analytic philosophy' is studied.

However, it is indeed analysis that some philosophers seem to have a problem with. Or, rather, perhaps it's more accurate to say 'philosophical analysis' rather than the simple 'analysis'. This is obviously the case because the words 'philosophical analysis' are more particular than 'analysis' and it may/will contain assumptions as to what philosophical analysis actually is.

Objective Truth?

If we want to put meat on what post-analytic philosophers see to be the problem (or simply a problem) with analytic philosophy, it's best to consult late-20th century and contemporary American pragmatism. This school is itself seen as being part of the post-analytic movement (i.e., which isn't a determinate or real school).

Many would say that such American pragmatists have a problem with the very notion of objective truth, realism and representationalism. They are things they see as being an idée fixe throughout the history of philosophy. And this, indeed, is no less the case when it came to 20th-century analytic philosophy.

A personal objection to this is that I've hardly read a single analytic philosopher mention - or use - the words “objective truth”. (I have read, however, Peter van Inwagen's 'Objectivity'.) Then again, it can easily be countered that a philosopher needn't use the actual words “objective truth” in order for him to be committed to the notion of objective truth. In other words, perhaps he simply calls it by another name.¹

In any case, the position that objective truth doesn't exist (or that it's not a worthy aim in philosophy) goes alongside a stress on the contingency of cognitive activity, the importance of convention and utility, and, indeed, the idea that human (or social) progress can never be ignored – not even in philosophy. Nonetheless, here again I don't see how there's an automatic (or prior) problem with accepting all this and still engaging in analytic philosophy (or in philosophical analysis).

For example and in very basic terms, one could offer a philosophical analysis of philosophical analysis (or some part thereof). And then, as a result, see philosophical problems with such philosophical analysis. Despite that, such a philosopher would still be in the domain of analytic philosophy (or of philosophical analysis).

Strangely enough, Richard Rorty seems to agree with this position. Or, at the least, he says something similar. In an interview conducted by Wayne Hudson and Win van Reijen, Rorty states:

"I think that analytic philosophy can keep its highly professional methods, the insistence on detail and mechanics, and just drop its transcendental project. I'm not out to criticize analytic philosophy as a style. It's a good style. I think the years of superprofessionalism were beneficial." 

I said the position is “similar” to the one advanced by Rorty. It's similar in the sense that an analytic philosopher needn't “drop [his] transcendental project”. That is, an analytic philosopher may be fully aware of Rorty's positions/arguments (or the general positions of post-analytic philosophers) and still be committed to the transcendental project. (Of course we'd need to know what Rorty means by the words “transcendental project”.)

Philosophy Must be Political?

It seems that the position of many post-analytic philosophers is primarily political - or at least primarily social – in nature. Hilary Putnam (1985), for example, has said that analytic philosophy has “come to the end of its own project—the dead end”. That can be taken to mean that philosophy should connect itself more thoroughly with other academic disciplines. Or, more broadly, that analytic philosophy should connect itself with culture or society as a whole.

The problem is that, on and off, analytic philosophy has already connected itself to many other disciplines. (Admittedly, that's been more the case since the 1980s and the rise of cognitive science.) To give just a couple of examples: the logical positivists connected themselves to science (or at least to physics). And, to give another example, philosophers in the 19th century connected themselves to logic, mathematics and, again, to science. This non-ostentatious “interdisciplinary” nature of philosophy has been the case, in fact, throughout the history of philosophy.

One can also say that philosophy can connect itself to other disciplines - and even culture as a whole - and still remain analytic philosophy. Philosophers can still practice philosophical analysis. (This, again, raises the question as to what analytic philosophy - or philosophical analysis - actually is.)

A philosopher may also ask why he should connect himself to other disciplines - never mind to something as vague (or as broad) as culture. In other words, a philosopher must have philosophical reasons as to why this would be a good thing, just as a philosopher must have philosophical reasons as to why it's a bad thing. That means that there'll be philosophical angles to this very debate. However, it can be added, those angles needn't always be philosophical in nature.

Another slant on this philosophy-society "binary opposition" is that it is argued that analytic philosophy is too professional and therefore too narrow. In other words, analytic philosophers are over-concerned with very tiny, narrow and specialised problems which have almost zero connection to society as a whole or indeed to anything else.

More technically and philosophically, it can also be argued that certain central commitments and assumptions of analytic philosophy have been shown to be indefensible. (Hence Putnam's own words quoted earlier.)

Yet all disciplines can be said to concerned with narrow or specialised issues or concerns. Yet this is an accusation more often aimed at analytic philosophy than at any other academic subject.

Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty appears to be talking about analytic philosophy as it was in the past (say, the 1950s to the 1970s), not as it is today or as it has been since, say, the 1980s.

Take the view that analytic philosophy has as its primary aim a form of knowledge which grounds all other forms of knowledge. This is odd. It's true that much traditional philosophy has placed various philosophical domains in the position of what used to be called First Philosophy. (It was once metaphysics, then epistemology, then philosophy of language, then philosophy of mind...) However, in the 20th century this has been far from the case. Indeed philosophers - throughout the 20th century - have argued against the nature of a first philosophy.

Take naturalists (e.g., the logical positivists, then Quine): arguably, they placed science (or simply physics) in the role of first philosophy. (Although such naturalists saw physics as being primary, that isn't in itself a commitment to also seeing it as some kind of first philosophy.)

It must be said that just as Rorty's post-philosophy is a philosophical position, so too is the Wittgensteinian attempt to “dissolve” and then disregard philosophical problems (if not philosophy itself). This position can be said to be held by Putnam and John McDowell, as well as by Rorty. (A more specific example of this would be the “problem” of how mind and language are connected to the world.)²

In any case, there's just as strong case for arguing that Rorty's later position was more a case of post-philosophy than post-analytic philosophy. In other words, like Heidegger and Derrida, Rorty had a problem with the whole damn show that is Western philosophy. And, here again, it can be argued that Rorty's position was more political (or social) than strictly philosophical. That said, a position that rejects philosophy in toto can't help being philosophical – in some or many ways – itself, as Rorty would have no doubt happily admitted. (Jacques Derrida did admit this.)

Notes

1) If you say that an argument (or a single statement) is “warranted and therefore assertible”, then is that a case of being wedded to the notion of objective truth? Or is the notion of warranted assertibility a different species entirely?

2) I put the word “problem” in scare quotes because the very stance of seeing such problems as problems means - according to Rorty, Derrida, Heidegger, etc. - that we've fallen prey to particular philosophical “style of thinking”. However, that position too would be a philosophical position.

Is Constructive Empiricism's Use of Counterfactuals Illicit?

Bas van Fraassen

Possible Worlds

At first glance it may seem odd that James Ladyman (2000) argues that constructive empiricist talk of observability may well require a commitment to possible worlds. Thus it would also seem - again on the surface - that any kind of empiricist must shun possible worlds. 

Possible worlds - to state the obvious – are neither empirical entities and nor are they observable (not even in principle). Thus, as a consequence, constructive empiricists would require unobservable entities in order to legitimise or justify their talk of observable entities.

Let's put the observability-in-principle position thus:

x is observable iff observers were in a suitable place, then they could observe x.

Now that's a bone fide counterfactual. Thus an old-style empiricist may now ask:

What are the truth-conditions of the statement “x is observable” (i.e., the statement above)?

Perhaps the constructive empiricist would say:

x is observable-in-principle because it has truth-conditions(-in-principle).

Why should the old-style empiricist accept either observables-in-principle or indeed truth-conditions-in principle? The whole point of observables is that they can be seen, smelt, heard, touched, etc. at the present moment in time (or at least they can... in principle!).

The constructive empiricist, thus, may require his truth-conditions to exist at possible worlds. Nonetheless, the truth-conditions can't exist at this moment in time because possible worlds don't exist at this or at any moment in time – at least not according to the empiricist.

Context-dependence

I'm not sure if I understand Bas van Fraassen's reply to such points. It involves a strong use of the notion of “context-dependence”. In basic terms, when we “fix the context” of a counterfactual claim about observability, that somehow stops the claim from being modal in nature.

What is fixed is the epistemic community – all the “suitably constituted observers” who're relevant to the counterfactual claim of observability. This, itself, is supposed to make the counterfactual conditional non-modal in nature. That is, once we explicate the nature of (ideal) observers in (ideal) situations, it is these things which we can empirically investigate (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 413-414). Nonetheless, we still have the non-Humean move from what's empirically observable at this present moment in time and in this place at this time, to that which is not empirically observable at this moment in time or in any place at this moment in time.

Thus statements about what's true at this moment in time - and at this place at this time - slide into what would be the case at other times and at other places. There's still a non-Humean jump that's not eased with these technical additions.

Van Fraassen adds extra detail to this.

He argues that the principle of observability can be cashed out in terms of the objective properties of the world. Moreover, we can use our best scientific theories in order to determine the truth (or content) of “x is observable” (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 415-416). But, again, there are hidden modal assumptions in all this technical detail and even, as James Ladyman argues, hidden commitments to possible worlds.

Take this statement:

If Bertrand Russell's teapot in Andromeda showed itself to observers (suitably prepared, etc.), then they could observe it.

It seems like a sleight of hand to say that to understand the statement above is - even though a counterfactual - entailed by the facts or the phenomena of the observable (empirical) world. Presumably that must be a reference to teapots and observers which and who exist at this moment in time and can be observed at this moment in time. However, wouldn't Hume have argued that a bone fide empiricist couldn't jump from teapots in our solar system to teapots in Andromeda without begging a few questions or assuming a few facts?

I mentioned facts in the last sentence. Ladyman (2004, 762) talks, instead, about “laws”. That is, he says that

“unless we take it that the specification by science of some regularities among the actual facts as laws … is latching onto objective features of the world”.

Wouldn't that mean, in our case, that the laws and objective features of Andromeda are assumed to be like the laws and objective features of the earth and our solar system? Yes, the laws of Andromeda are the same as the laws of the earth and our solar system. And, I assume, Russell's teapot would behave in a pretty similar way to how it would behave if it were floating near the moon or even in the sky above us.

Nonetheless, Ladyman does go on to say that only objectively-existing laws (rather than “pragmatically selected empirical regularities”) can justify (or warrant) our claims about the nature of Russell's teapot or any other phenomena of Andromeda. So it's not the constructive empiricist's claims about the nature and behaviour of Russell's teapot in Andromeda that are problematic per se. It's that in order to justify (or warrant) those claims the constructive empiricist would need to commit himself to entities which aren't kosher from an empiricist's point of view: viz., objective laws. Again, the only thing that a constructive empiricist can rely on are pragmatically-selected empirical regularities, not objective laws. Indeed the acceptance of objective laws commit one to a metaphysics that's not empiricist in nature.

References

Monton, B., and van Fraassen, B., (2003) “Constructive Empiricism and Modal Nominalism”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 54: 405–422.

Ladyman, James. (2000) “What's Really Wrong With Constructive Empiricism? Van Fraassen and the Metaphysics of Modality”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 51: 837–856.

- (2004) “Constructive Empiricism and Modal Metaphysics: A Reply to Monton and van Fraassen”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55: 755–765.