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I have maintained that the traditional conception of analytic philosophy – according to which it is a philosophical school defined by the view that philosophy is nothing more than linguistic analysis – is the only legitimate conception of analytic philosophy, and that, thus conceived, analytic philosophy is an illusion. In what follows, I respond to objections to my “illusionist” approach to analytic philosophy posed by Gary Hardcastle and Chris Pincock. I. Reply to Hardcastle Like Michael Beaney, Gary Hardcastle raises questions both about my insistence that philosophical schools be defined doctrinally and about the meaning and coherence of the illusionist position. I will address these issues in reverse order. I describe the illusionist position as traditionalist (i.e., it accepts the traditional conception, as described above) concerning what analytic philosophy is supposed to be, but as differing from the standard traditionalist account over whether analytic philosophy exists at all. “This is good as far as it goes,” Hardcastle says, “except wasn’t it part of the traditionalist account that analytic philosophy existed, that is, that there were analytic philosophers, properly named as such because they in fact belonged to a philosophical school?” Of course there is a sense in which Hardcastle is correct. If we had asked a traditionalist in the 1950s whether anything corresponded to his concept of analytic philosophy, the answer surely would have been yes. But I’m inclined to classify the presumption of existence as an assertoric or doxastic attitude toward what is conceptualized rather than part of a concept’s content, and am in any case skeptical of any “ontological argument” purporting to show that that, by endorsing the traditional conception of what analytic philosophy is, one is also affirming its existence. If this is indeed Hardcastle’s view, then I have a nice argument for the existence of God I’d like to sell him. Related to this is Hardcastle’s charge that my account of illusionism involves an equivocation over the term ‘philosophical school’, a point he brings out nicely by quoting passages in which I first affirm and then deny that analytic philosophy is a philosophical school. Now, there may well be equivocation afoot in these cases; but not over the term ‘philosophical school’. Instead, the verb ‘is’ is being used in different senses. For when I affirm that, on the illusionist view, analytic philosophy is a school of philosophy, I am using the ‘is’ of predication or classification to make a claim about the what of analytic philosophy, just as one might say “a unicorn is a horse with a horn on its head.” By contrast, when I deny that analytic philosophy is a school of philosophy, I am using an ‘is’ of existence to make a claim about the whether of analytic philosophy, just as one might say “a unicorn isn’t really a horse at all, since unicorns don’t exist.” Hardcastle also has several concerns related to my view that philosophical schools should be defined in terms of their philosophical commitments, or doctrines. Two of these are not directly about that requirement itself, but about my argument for it – or, rather, his reconstruction of my argument for it. The first of these is that the “second premise asserts … the content of the conclusion, and so the argument appears to beg the question.” But it is hard to see how. In Hardcastle’s reconstruction of my argument, the second premise asserts basically that the production of views (doctrines) by means of reason is essential – both in the sense of “necessary” and of “most central” – to philosophy as an historical human enterprise. The conclusion asserts that only doctrinal definitions will do for philosophical schools. Plausibly, different concepts indicate different content. How is it, then, that the former proposition asserts the content of the latter? Hardcastle’s all too brief explanation is as follows: “Granted the first premise,” which simply insists on real definitions for philosophical schools, “the question of whether we can fashion something other than a doctrinal definition of analytic philosophy just is the question of whether analytic philosophy is, in essence, a set of doctrines.” But I am at a loss to see how this counts as begging the question; for the complaint seems to amount to this: granted the truth of the first premise, the truth of the conclusion turns upon or is determined by the truth of the second premise. Far from making the argument question-begging, this is just the way any sound syllogism works: if the form is valid and one premise true, then the truth of the conclusion will be determined by the truth of the second premise. Without further help from Hardcastle in clarifying the nature of the supposed circularity, I am at a loss to know what more can be said in reply. I will note, however, that further discussion of the issue might be helped by a more complete reconstruction of my argument. My argument was originally presented in narrative form rather than by way of numbered propositions. In his reconstruction, Hardcastle provides only an abbreviated reconstruction which, though it captures the gist of my argument, suppresses several of its premises and intermediate conclusions. I count at least twenty propositions crucial to the argument, nine of which are intermediate conclusions.1 It may be that the perception of circularity depends on eliding the contents of some of the propositions suppressed in his reconstruction with one of his expressed propositions. Hardcastle’s next objection has to do with my claim, captured in the second premise of his reconstruction, that, as a theoretical discipline, philosophy produces “sets of views about the way things are.” The objection is that this claim is false in light of the fact that some philosophers (“Carnap and a number of positivists”) have disagreed with it. However, while these may be counterexamples to Hardcastle’s reconstruction of my second premise, they are not counterexamples to any claims I actually made. For instance, I said that this was “what most philosophers, both currently and historically, take to be true of the philosophical schools with which they affiliate,” and that “few in the contemporary analytic world would deny that philosophy is a theoretical discipline” whose business is “the production and critical assessment of theories by means of reasoning,” where theories are “sets of views (propositions) about the way things are, or what is the case, in some region or other – or possibly the whole – of reality.” And, I summed up the point by saying “I trust it will be recognized that this minimal conception of what philosophy is and what it involves has been widely held, at least implicitly, throughout the history of the discipline.” Now, the existence of a handful of dissenters – which is all that Hardcastle demonstrates – is perfectly consistent with my claims, and does little more than show that there is an alternative to the majority view. Which of these views about philosophy is the correct one is, of course, a different question, and one not to be decided merely by “majority rule”. But in this case I think that the majority gets it right. The alternative championed by the logical positivists (and also by Wittgenstein on some interpretations) is not very plausible, as is suggested by its short-lived popularity in philosophical culture and confirmed by the fact that it is not possible to avoid making metaphysical claims by focusing on “pure syntax”. Language and its parts (like syntax) are parts of reality, so that to make claims about these things is to make claims about (parts of) reality – just as the traditional view has it.2 So much for Hardcastle’s objections to my argument for the requirement of doctrinal definition. But he also objects to the requirement itself. Like Beaney, Hardcastle seems to think that the requirement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a philosophical school or, as he puts it, an “intellectual community”. The norm for an intellectual community is diversity rather than uniformity of views. Consequently, to define an intellectual community in terms of consensus-views is to misunderstand the nature of intellectual community as such; and to do so in the context of historical work is to void such work of much of its value and interest. First, Hardcastle’s charge that I have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of a philosophical school qua intellectual community depends upon treating ‘philosophical school’ and ‘intellectual community’ as synonymous, and as referring to a type of group characterized (and perhaps united) by cooperative intellectual activity – particularly ideational influence and development – but not necessarily by doctrinal unity in the form of shared views. His argument seems to be: philosophical schools are intellectual communities, and Preston fails to see that. Now, I do not deny that these two terms can be used synonymously in some contexts. For instance, treating philosophical schools as intellectual communities seems well suited to looking at them from a predominantly historical or sociological perspective. But there is also a sense of ‘philosophical school’ which is synonymous with ‘school of thought’, and doctrinal unity would seem to be essential to philosophical schools thus understood. This construal of ‘philosophical school’ is more in keeping with a predominantly philosophical interest in the socio-historical landscape of philosophy. I am guided by such an interest, and this is how I use the term. So it is not that I have failed to understand the nature of philosophical schools qua intellectual communities. Rather, it’s that I am not interested in analytic philosophy merely or even primarily as an intellectual community, but as a school of thought, and as an intellectual community only insofar as it is one organized around a school of thought. Now, one can question the appropriateness of approaching analytic philosophy as a school of thought, but here I appeal to my argument from the nature of philosophy (which, if my replies to Hardcastle have succeeded, still stands), and also to the fact that analytic philosophy originally presented itself as a doctrinally unified “school of thought” even though it wasn’t. Hardcastle himself agrees that the early analysts “projected unity” over their doctrinal disunity. What he does not acknowledge is the effect this would have had in shaping the original concept of analytic philosophy, and thereby the authoritative definition of ‘analytic philosophy’. But I contend that, on account of its projection of doctrinal unity, the original concept, and hence the original meaning of ‘analytic philosophy’, included the content “philosophical group united in the view that philosophy is the analysis of language.” For this reason, it is appropriate to approach analytic philosophy as a school of thought first and an intellectual community only second. Also for this reason, it is wrong to approach it merely as an intellectual community. Indeed, the intellectual community that Hardcastle picks out cannot be identical to analytic philosophy, though it may be extensionally equivalent to it. For although ‘analytic philosophy’ can refer to something like Hardcastle’s intellectual community (specifically, a cross-section of persons, ideas and events that are usually taken to constitute the extension of ‘analytic philosophy’), the term’s referent does not determine its meaning. As I argued more fully in my reply to Beaney, the contemporary use of ‘analytic philosophy’ is historically grounded in an early, erroneous construal of a cross-section of this sort (there called “the subset”) as unified by certain defining doctrines (among other attributes), and hence as constituting a school of philosophy in my sense. That is, our practice of holding together a certain set of philosophers under the label “analytic philosophy” is grounded in a monumental and longstanding error of perception – an illusion. Without this fact firmly in place as the foundation of our work on analytic philosophy, there can be no adequate justification for picking out just these figures and factions as belonging to analytic philosophy, whether we construe them as merely a subdivision of the history of philosophy (a “cross-section” or “subset”), as an intellectual community, or as a movement, a tradition, or a school. Indeed, Hardcastle’s ability to properly demarcate analytic philosophy qua intellectual community depends crucially upon this fact, for it is a case of our practice of holding together a certain set of philosophers under the label “analytic philosophy,” and that practice is itself explicable only in terms of my proposed “illusion.” It is therefore a mistake to say that analytic philosophy just is this intellectual community. At best that would be incomplete. Instead, we should say that analytic philosophy was supposed to have been a school with such-and-such defining doctrines, but it turned out not to be, and that the figures and factions thought to constitute this school really only constituted a movement or tradition or intellectual community. But to say that for the reasons just given is basically to accept illusionism. II. Reply to Pincock Christopher Pincock’s objection to my approach is not that I have made an error of principle, but only a strategic error in uniting two aims of history that are best kept separate. I gloss these two aims as follows: (1) to understand or explain the philosophical success of analytic philosophy, and (2) to understand or explain the social success of analytic philosophy (or analytic philosophers). Since, as Pincock agrees, philosophical success is a matter of having rationally defensible views, the strong doctrinal focus of my approach is not only relevant but essential to achieving goal 1. But social success is largely the result of non-ideational, causal-historical factors. Thus, the focus on doctrines alone, required for goal 1, is not apropos to goal 2 (hereafter, G1 and G2). From this, Pincock concludes that focus on doctrines should be completely excluded from work on G2, except in the unlikely case that a philosophical group’s social success can be explained solely in terms of the power and cogency of its defining doctrines. Now, the reasons for avoiding a focus on doctrines alone in pursuit of G2 are perfectly clear – insofar as the introduction of ideas into human history always depends upon the birth, growth and survival of particular humans, a philosophical group’s social success will never depend solely on the power and cogency of its defining doctrines. But a case for entirely excluding doctrines has not been made. Indeed, although appeal to causal-historical factors is necessary for explaining a group’s social success, it is far from clear that this could ever be sufficient, not only in the history of philosophy, but elsewhere as well. Imagine, for instance, a history of Christianity’s social success that assigned no explanatory role to the views characteristic of Christianity. Such a history would be insufficient for G2, for it would fail to do justice to the fact that the appeal of Christianity’s teachings has contributed to its social success. The relevance of views to social success in philosophy and other theoretical disciplines is even greater; whereas the role of views in religion and politics need not be understood as fundamental, they must be understood as fundamental in philosophy. Because of what philosophy as a human pursuit is, views will be central to it. Moreover, to the extent that the pursuit of philosophy is a human institution occupying a certain social space, either within the academy or beyond it, the very nature of philosophy prescribes certain norms for the sociology of that social space. And one of these is that the position of individuals and groups within the inevitable social hierarchy of that space is to be based on excellence in philosophy, and that means excellence in crafting rational views. Indeed, we can even say that there is a corresponding norm concerning the right of a view to occupy the “attention-space” (I borrow the term from the sociologist Randall Collins) of the philosophical institution, such that only rationally well-crafted views should occupy that attention-space. Of course, there are all kinds of epistemological challenges to properly abiding by these norms, but they are norms nonetheless. So, because the appeal of certain views frequently plays a role in the success of various kinds of social groups, and because the rational appeal of views positively ought to play this role in the social world of philosophy, there is no reason to exclude a doctrinal focus when trying to achieve G2. On the contrary, to the extent that one is interested in understanding not merely the dominance of a group in the philosophical social space, but also whether its dominance was justified and hence legitimate by the standards of that social space, we must look to the rationality of the views associated with that group. And this is mainly what I aim to do with my illusionist approach.3 Pincock has a second argument for rejecting illusionism, one that proceeds upon different grounds. He says: I agree that if we are trying to meet (G2-A) [i.e., G2 as applied to analytic philosophy] and we initially also assume that analytic philosophy is a philosophical school of the sort specified by the received view, then we must conclude that analytic philosophy does not exist. But the appropriate thing to do if this happens is to drop our assumption that analytic philosophy is that kind or any kind of philosophical school, and go on to try to resolve (G2-A) by other means. At this point, I do not see why we must remain wedded to the conception of analytic philosophy initially offered by the received view. But we should not take Pincock’s suggestion to heart, for reasons already given in my replies to Beaney and Hardcastle: to do so would be historically misleading, as it would cast aside the very elements in analytic philosophy’s historically extended social-ontological structure that give it its unity, establish the “analytic philosophy” language game, and thereby constitute it a named social object – and not just any such object, but the very one that we are interested in when we research the history and nature of analytic philosophy. 1 Considerations of space required that I cut these replies to less than half their original length. Among the material cut was a complete, formal reconstruction of my argument. The complete set of comments can be seen at: 2 For more on this point, see D. Willard, ‘Why Semantic Ascent Fails’. Metaphilosophy, 14:3-4 (1983), 276-90. 3 Admittedly, that this is my ultimate goal in developing the illusionist approach does not always come through clearly in my journal articles due to the limitations of space and scope that are part and parcel of that format. I trust that it comes through clearly in my book, Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion (Continuum Publishing, 2007). Department of Philosophy |