(Note: The quote in the image directly above is a paraphrase of Voltaire’s actual words. The full passage — which does, however, state the same idea in more detail — can be found in his Dictionnaire philosophique , from 1764.)
Philosophers can use the same words or (technical) terms in very different ways. What’s more, not all philosophers define or explain their terms. Nor do they explain how and why such words or terms almost entirely flow from their very particular philosophies. (This is especially true of academic philosophers who write only for those few fellow academics “in the know”.)
The situation is even worse when philosophical subjects are discussed and (technical) philosophical terms are used on social media or in other everyday contexts.
So here are a few examples of the kind of terms or words this essay has in mind. (The relevant words or terms are in bold. I’ll leave it to readers to decide if they were written by philosophers or by laypersons.) Here goes:
“What was the most relevant philosophy in the 20th century?”
“The statement ‘God exists’ (or ‘God doesn’t exist’) is meaningless.”
“His theory has been debunked.”
“Pegasus exists but is not actual.”
“There are facts which can never be known.”
“Consciousness is an energy which pervades the universe.”
“No one as proved that there is such a thing as evolution.”
Of course some of those terms or words have those have been defined; though still rarely. Others are virtually never defined — especially by most of the people who use them.
Conceptual Analysis?
It’s not that conceptual analysis (sometimes simply called philosophical analysis), specifically, ever completely went away. That said, as D.M. Armstrong hints later in this piece, it did come under severe criticism during and after the demise of “linguistic philosophy”. So at one point there was much talk of “pedantry”, “irrelevance” and a “petty focus on minutia” (at the expense of focussing on meaty, deep and heavy stuff). Sure, not all these criticisms were aimed specifically at conceptual analysis — yet even this fundamental and basic part of philosophy was deemed suspect by some (or even many)philosophers and laypersons at one point — and it still is today. (This is especially the case when it come to some of those academics who specialise in continental philosophy; as well as a number of continental philosophers themselves.)
D.M. Armstrong was mentioned a moment ago. In the late 1960s (when he wrote the following words) he argued that
“philosophers in the ‘analytic tradition’ swung back from Wittgensteinian and even Rylian pessimism to a more traditional conception of the proper role and tasks of philosophy”.
And the “proper role and task of philosophy” was
“to give an account… of the general nature of things and of man”.
It must now be said that the words “conceptual analysis” are used in an extremely broad way in the following piece. In other words, there are no references to specific movements or positions within philosophy — either past or present. Rather, this essay is mainly about what’s prosaically called defining your terms. Yet that must surely — at least in part — involve the analysis of concepts.
So, for example, the following has nothing to say about Quine’s rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction. And neither does it argue that one can “give necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept” one uses. (Demanding necessary and sufficient conditions for the concepts we use is both a — hidden - normative stance and it also seems to reify concepts.) In other words, with Wittgenstein it can be accepted that there are different ways in which the same words, terms or concepts can be used. Yet the acceptance of all this still allows for — and still demands — the definition of terms within any philosophical debate or context you like.
Following on from all that, while many (analytic) philosophers accept that conceptual analysis, explanation and definition are fruitful tools of philosophy, they still don’t believe that these things are all that there is to philosophy. (See later comments on — and quotes from — D.M. Armstrong.)
Debate?
In basic terms, if a philosopher or layperson doesn’t define his terms, then what he’s saying — or stating — may turn out to be confused, banal or simply false (i.e., after a definition is given or guessed at). Thus if the vague use of terms and the rhetoric (or poetry) is stripped away, then there may be nothing much underneath. Indeed vague and undefined terms are often simply part of a general display of verbalised (or written down) emotions and biases designed specifically to appeal to other people’s emotions and biases.
The problem here is that if people engaged in an exchange are using the same term in very different ways, then we can hardly say that there’s any debate occurring at all. What’s more, this situation is confounded by the fact that the debaters (if that’s an appropriate word to use in such extreme cases) assume — or simply believe — that his/her opponent is using the same word or term in the same way. That’s the case even when it’s clear to some on the outside that this isn’t happening. Thus, again, how can we even say that there is a debate (or dialogue) going on here if the debaters are talking about different things even when they’re using exactly the same words or terms?
In fact using the same words or (technical) terms in different ways is worse than having a fellow debater who keeps on changing the subject. At least then there’s an obvious problem. However, when people bandy around and share the words “consciousness”, “existence”, “truth”, “fact”, “free will”, “knowledge”, “prove”, etc. and mean very different things by those words, then that situation is far worse than one in which a debater simply makes a statement which is followed by a largely unrelated counter-statement (though not a counter-argument) from his fellow debater. In this former case, there’s the seeming situation that the debaters are talking about the same thing. Yet if they’re using their primary terms in very different ways, and those terms are born of very different philosophies, then that’s even worse than a simple shouting match between two rival debaters. At least in this latter case the debaters are talking about the same thing — even if they strongly disagree with each another.
Take the case of a boxing match in which instead of the two boxers punching each other at the same time, one boxer punches the other boxer (who has his hands down) for a couple of minutes, and then that other boxer does the same thing to him. In that sense, we don’t have a mutual fight: we have one set of punches from one boxer being followed by another set of punches from the other boxer. Of course this isn’t boxing at all. Similarly, perhaps we don’t have a debate (or dialogue) at all when the people are using the same word or term in very different ways and yet neither person is aware of that fact.
Of course it’s true that any given philosopher or layperson might well have defined his terms elsewhere — even in great detail. And you can’t expect a philosopher or layperson to define his term every time he uses it (see last section). That said, even if he has defined his terms elsewhere, the chances that the reader or fellow debater has read those definitions may be — and usually are— very slim indeed.
D.M. Armstrong on the Analysis of Concepts and the Analysis of Things
In his paper ‘The Causal Theory of Mind’ (1968), the Australian philosopher David Malet Armstrong (1926–2014) was right to argue that
“[Gilbert] Ryle was wrong in taking the analysis of concepts to be the end of philosophy”.
Armstrong himself believed that
“the analysis of concepts is a means by which the philosopher makes his contribution to great general questions, not about concepts, but about things”.
It must now be said that Armstrong wasn’t only discussing “the analysis of concepts” here. He also believed that “the philosopher” has “certain [other] skills” which
“include the stating and assessing of the worth of arguments, including the bringing to light and making explicit suppressed premises of arguments, the detection of ambiguities and inconsistencies”.
That said, I’ll stick to conceptual analysis and defining terms here.
So let’s take it as true that Ryle believed that “the analysis of concepts [is] the end of philosophy”. Yet if he did, then that hardly makes sense. After all, are concepts, words or terms about (or do they refer to) other concepts, words or terms? How could Ryle have believed that? (Unless he was a “linguistic idealist”.)
Armstrong clearly rejected the terrible “binary opposition” between “the analysis of concepts” and the analysis of things. Yet surely we can only (as it were) get to things through our concepts. Of course that still doesn’t mean that the analysis of concepts is “the end of philosophy”.
The situation is that when we discus things, events, facts, theories, conditions… or anything, we use words, terms and/or concepts to do so. So it seems that it’s almost inevitable that philosophers should scrutinise the words, terms and concepts we use in such discussions.
It can also be argued that almost everything will flow from people’s own personal definitions (even if tacit or very vague) of the philosophical words or terms they use. In other words, it’s not as if there are determinate and fixed definitions of the words or terms used by philosophers and laypeople when discussing philosophical issues.
Of course a person may also claim that he defines a word in a particular way because he believes that his own personal definition unequivocally follows from what the x he’s referring to actually is… But that’s only the case if he defines his terms at all!
Again: is all this about words (or technical terms) and how we define them? Not at all. As Armstrong argued above: it’s also about things. So if definitions are very important, then once someone defines his word or term (say, “consciousness”, “existence”, “free will”, “fact”, “prove”, etc.), then we can move on from there. And that’s the case even if we’re using those words to talk about Armstrong’s things — concrete things, events and even facts.
Problems With Definition and Analysis
There may be at least a couple of responses (either in words or in thought) to this essay which cite my “self-referential inconsistency”. After all, this piece never defines the word “define”. And neither does it define “concept”, “analysis”, “explanation”, etc. That isn’t a big problem. It isn’t being argued here that every term or word one uses should be defined and that it should be defined every time one uses it. That would lead to the pedantry mentioned in the introduction — not to advancing genuine debate. In any case, certain terms or words are less in need of definition than others. And, of course, definitions themselves depend on conversational and other kinds of context.
This also means that we are — in some senses — free to define our words in any way we wish. This is especially the case if there’s no consensus definition of the philosophical term under dispute. So this makes it even more acceptable to take a (as it were) stipulational position on philosophical terms.
And there is also a problem with over-stressing the importance of definitions — or even with simply emphasising their importance at all. Indeed the Australian philosopher David Chalmers (1966-) summed up this problem with a joke. He wrote:
“One might as well define ‘world peace’ as ‘a ham sandwich.’ Achieving world peace becomes much easier, but it is a hollow achievement.”
Clearly, even someone who argues that stipulation is important won’t also accept that we can define the words “world peace” as “a ham sandwich”.
In addition, analytic philosophers have often prided themselves on their “conceptual clarifications”. However, these clarifications don’t always —at least not only in themselves — bring about clarity. Indeed they often do the opposite. That is, they can also encourage a degree of pedantry and academese.
It can also be said that the words “explicit explanation” and “explicit definition” will themselves need defining and explaining. What’s more, their usage and definitions may simply be relative to specific analytic philosophers and what they take these things to mean. In other words, much (or some) analytic philosophy may only be clear to other (professional) analytic philosophers. Thus the explicit explanations and explicit definitions found in analytic philosophy may only work as explanations and definitions when it comes to other analytic philosophers. This means that those on the outside (including highly-educated people) may not appreciate (or even recognise) that supposed clarity or take such explanations and definitions to be explanations and definitions.
Defining terms and the analysis of concepts also tie in with the issue of obscurity.
So, finally, let’s finish with some detail on what the word “clarity” may mean within a philosophical context.
Take the following passage from the American philosopher Gary Gutting (1942–2019). Gutting wrote:
“My concern [] is about the obscurity that arises because authors do not make a sufficient effort to connect their novel concepts to more familiar (even if technical) concepts that would allow an informed and conscientious reader to make an assessment of their claims. The result is writing that is hermetic in the sense that it cuts itself off from the very issues of common concern that it is trying to address.”
The words above were aimed at a handful of continental — more specifically, French — philosophers. However, they can also be aimed at some analytic philosophers and many other targets too.
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