Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

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Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

318

Christianity in general, in spite of striking contrasts with Stoicism, has

found elements within it that parallel its own position. As the Stoic, for

example, feels safe and protected in the rational care of some immanent

Providence, so the Christian senses that a transcendent though incarnate and

loving God is looking after him. And in general, Stoicism has played a great

part throughout the ages in the theological formulation of Christian thought as

well as in the actual realization of the Christian ideals.

Contemporary philosophy has borrowed from Stoicism, at least in part,

its conviction that man must be conceived as being closely and essentially

connected with the whole universe. And contemporary Humanism still

contains some obviously Stoic elements, such as its belief in the solidarity of

all peoples based upon their common nature, and in the primacy of reason. It

is perhaps just because Stoicism has never become a full-fledged philosophic

system that, many centuries after the dissolution of the Stoic school,

fundamental themes of its philosophy have emerged again and again, and

many have become incorporated into modern thinking.

Modern Schools

Analytic and Linguistic philosophy

The methods that have dominated British philosophy for most of the

20th century and American philosophy since somewhat more recently have

been called Linguistic and Analytic because language and the analysis of the

concepts expressed by language have been a central concern. Though

Australia and the Scandinavian countries have also contributed to this

movement, it has won a very limited following elsewhere. Although there is a

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unity of outlook in the tradition, individual philosophers and movements

within it have differed, often radically, about the goals and methodology of

philosophy. A leading figure prior to the mid-20th century, Ludwig

Wittgenstein, an Austrian-born Cambridge philosopher, for example, may

have been unique in the history of philosophy in having engaged in two

periods of profoundly influential philosophical productivity of which the later

work was in large part a renunciation and a sustained argument against the

earlier. Yet both the early Wittgenstein (represented by his Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus, 1922) and the later (represented by the Philosophical

Investigations, 1953) are central examples of Analytic philosophy.

Moreover, the aims assigned to the philosophical study of language have

often been different. Some philosophers, among them Bertrand Russell and

the early Wittgenstein, have thought that the underlying structure of language

mirrors that of the world – that from an analysis of language a philosopher can

grasp important truths about reality. This so-called picture theory of language,

though influential, is generally repudiated by current Analytic philosophers.

Another important dispute concerns whether everyday language is defective,

vague, misleading, and even, at times, contradictory. Some Analytic

philosophers have thus proposed the construction of an “ideal” language:

precise, free of ambiguity, and clear in structure. The general model for such a

language has been symbolic logic, the growth of which in the 20th century has

played a central role in Analytic philosophy. An ideal language, it was

thought, would resolve many traditional philosophical disputes that have

arisen from the misleading structure of natural languages. At the other pole,

some philosophers have thought that many philosophic problems have come

from paying too little attention to what men say in everyday language about

various situations.

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Despite such disagreements, Analytic philosophers have much in

common. Most of them, for example, have concentrated on particular

philosophical problems, such as that of induction, or have examined specific

concepts, such as those of memory or of personal identity, without attempting

to construct any grand metaphysical schemes – an attitude that has roots as

ancient as those of the Socratic method exemplified in Plato’s dialogues.

Almost invariably Plato began with specific questions such as “What is

knowledge?” or “What is justice?” and pursued them in a way that can be

viewed, without undue strain, as philosophical analysis in the modern sense.

Ideally, a philosophical analysis illuminates some important concept and

helps to answer philosophical questions involving the concept. A famous

example of such analysis is contained in Bertrand Russell’s theory of definite

descriptions. In a simple subject-predicate statement such as “Socrates is

wise,” he said, there seems to be something referred to (Socrates) and

something said about it (that he is wise). If, instead of a proper name,

however, a “definite description” is substituted, as in the statement “The

president of the United States is wise,” there is apparently still something

referred to and something said about it. But a problem arises when nothing fits

the description, as in the statement “The present king of France is wise.”

Though there is apparently nothing for the statement to be about, one

nevertheless understands what it says. Consequently, a pre-World War I

philosopher, Alexius Meinong, celebrated for his Gegenstandstheorie (“theory

of objects”), felt forced by such examples to distinguish between things that

have real existence and things that have some other sort of existence; for such

statements could not be understood unless they were about something.

In Russell’s view, philosophers such as Meinong were misled by surface

grammatical form into thinking that such statements are simple subject-

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predicate statements. In reality they are complex; in fact, an analysis of the

foregoing example shows that the definite description, “the present king of

France,” is not an independent unit in the statement at all. Upon analysis, the

statement is a complex conjunction of statements: (1) “There is a present king

of France”; (2) “There is at most one present king of France”; and (3) “If

anyone is a present king of France, he is wise.” But, more importantly, each of

the three components is a general statement and is not about anything or

anyone in particular. There is no phrase in the complete analysis equivalent to

“the present king of France,” which shows that the phrase is not an

expression, like a proper name, that refers to something as the thing that the

whole statement talks about. There is no need, therefore, to make Meinong’s

distinction between things that have real existence and things that have some

other kind of existence.

General Viewpoint of Analytic Philosophy

Nature, Role, and Method of Analysis

Analytic philosophy is concerned with the close and careful examination

of concepts.

Status of Philosophy in the Empiricist Tradition

In spirit and style Analytic philosophy has strong ties with the Empiricist

tradition, which stresses the data received through the senses and which,

except for brief periods, has characterized British philosophy for some

centuries, distinguishing it from the more Rationalistic trends of continental

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European philosophy. It is not surprising, therefore, that Analytic philosophy

should find its home mainly in the Anglo-Saxon countries. In fact, the

beginning of modern Analytic philosophy is generally dated from the time

when two of its major figures, Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, both

Cambridge philosophers, rebelled against an anti-Empiricist Idealism that had

temporarily captured the English philosophical scene. The most famous

British Empiricists – John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John

Stuart Mill – had many interests, doctrines, and methods in common with

contemporary Analytic philosophers. Although many of their particular

doctrines are favorite targets of attack by Analytic philosophers today, one

feels that this is more the result of a common interest in certain problems than

any difference in general philosophical outlook.

Most Empiricists, though admitting that the senses fail to yield the

certainty requisite for knowledge, hold nonetheless that it is only through

observation and experimentation that justified beliefs about the world can be

gained; i.e., a priori reasoning from self-evident premises cannot reveal how

the world is. This view has resulted in a sharp dichotomy among the sciences:

between the physical sciences, which ultimately must verify their theories by

observation, and the deductive or a priori sciences – e.g., mathematics and

logic – the method of which is the deduction of theorems from given axioms.

Thus, the deductive sciences cannot give justified beliefs, much less

knowledge, of the world. This consequence was one of the cornerstones of

two important movements within Analytic philosophy, logical atomism and

Logical Positivism. In the Positivist’s view, for example, the theorems of

mathematics are merely the result of working out the consequences of the

conventions that have been adopted for the use of its symbols.

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The question then arises whether philosophy itself is to be assimilated to

empirical or to a priori sciences. Early Empiricists assimilated philosophy to

the Empirical sciences. They were less self-reflective about its methods than

contemporary Analytic philosophers are. Being preoccupied with

epistemology (theory of knowledge) and the philosophy of mind, and holding

that fundamental facts can be learned about these subjects from individual

introspection, they took their work to be a kind of introspective psychology.

Analytic philosophers in the 20th century, on the other hand, have been less

inclined to appeal ultimately to direct introspection. Moreover, the

development of rigorous methods in formal logic seemed to promise help in

solving philosophical problems – and logic is as a priori as a science can be. It

seemed, then, that philosophy must be classed with mathematics and logic.

Conceptual, Linguistic, and Scientific Analysis

The question remained, however, what philosophy’s function and

methodology are. For a great many Analytic philosophers who do philosophy

in the minute and meticulous manner of G.E. Moore and, in particular, for

those who have made Oxford the center of Analytic philosophy, its business is

the analysis of concepts. For them, philosophy is an a priori discipline because

the philosopher in some sense already possesses the concept in which he is

interested and needs no observations in order to analyze it.

Philosophy can be seen either as conceptual or as linguistic analysis. In

the analysis of the concept of seeing, for example, the philosopher is not

expressing purely linguistic concerns – with, say, the English verb “to see” –

though an investigation of what can be said using that verb may be relevant to

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his conclusions. For a concept is independent of any particular languages; a

concept is something that all languages, insofar as they are capable of

expressing the concept, have in common. Thus, philosophers who stress that it

is concepts that they analyze attempt to rebut the charge that their problems

and solutions are merely verbal.

In contrast, other Analytic philosophers have been concerned with how

expressions are used in a particular, nontechnical, everyday language. Thus,

the term ordinary language philosophy has been applied by critics as a term of

opprobrium to such philosophers. An influential study, The Concept of Mind

(1949), by Gilbert Ryle, a prominent Oxford Analyst, is an example of a work

that some critics took to depend in large part on a trivial appeal to how

English speakers talk; but many of Ryle’s arguments could equally well have

been given by Analytic philosophers who would look upon the term ordinary

language with horror.

The problem of perception illustrates how Analytic philosophers who do

conceptual analysis think of the goal of philosophy as both different from and

complementary to science. Physiologists, psychologists, and physicists –

through experiments, observations, and testable theories – have also

contributed to man’s understanding of perception. There is in the sciences,

however, a strong tendency to advance beyond earlier positions, which seems

to be absent from philosophy. In philosophy, for example, the account of

perception given by such 20th-century Analytic philosophers as G.E. Moore

and the Positivist A.J. Ayer has a close connection with that of Locke in the

17th century.

The difference between philosophy and science is that, whereas the

scientist investigates an actual occurrence, such as seeing, the philosopher

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investigates a concept that he already possesses quite independently of what

he might discover through the occurrence. Whereas the scientist begins by

supposing that he can recognize examples of seeing and is already exercising

the concept, the philosopher wants to know what is involved in seeing in the

sense of what conditions one can use to classify cases as examples of seeing.

He may want to know, for example, whether certain conditions are necessary

or sufficient. In testing the philosophical theory that, for an observer to see an

object, the object must cause a visual experience in him (the causal theory of

perception), one does not set up a scientific experiment. It would be of no use

to set up situations in which various physical objects are not causing any

visual experiences in order to see whether they still can be seen. For if the

theory is correct, no such experimental situation will be an instance of seeing;

and if it is wrong, merely describing a hypothetical situation would suffice.

The question is one about how situations are classified, and for that purpose

hypothetical situations are as good as real ones.

Therapeutic Function of Analysis

For some philosophers in the Analytic tradition, especially those

influenced by Wittgenstein, the analysis of concepts has therapeutic value

beyond the intrinsic enjoyment of doing it. Even scientists and laymen in their

philosophical moments generate problems by not understanding the proper

analyses of the concepts that they employ. They are then tempted to formulate

theories to explain these difficulties, when instead they should be sorting out

the roles of the concepts, which would show them that there was no problem

to begin with. Thus, the failure to see how psychological concepts –

sensations, emotions, and desires – are employed has led philosophers to such

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problems as how one can know what is going on in another’s mind or how

desires and emotions can produce physical changes in the body, and vice

versa. Analysis of the concepts involved would, in this way of looking at

philosophy, “dissolve” rather than solve the problems, for philosophers would

come to see that their formulations of the problem rest on mistakes about the

concepts involved.

This way of looking at philosophy has often been criticized as making it

merely a clearing up of the confusions of other philosophers and therefore a

sterile enterprise. The confusions, however, need not be only those of other

philosophers. Scientists, for example, can also generate philosophical theories

that affect how they design their experiments, which may, thus, be subjects for

philosophical therapeutics. Behaviorism in psychology – which views

emotions, desires, and attitudes as being dispositions to behave in certain

ways – seems to be a philosophical theory and perhaps to be based on a

confusion about the analysis of psychological concepts. Yet Behaviorism has

influenced psychologists in their approach to the science. Thus, in this view,

philosophy can have a therapeutic value beyond the sphere of philosophical

games.

Philosophy, in spite of its abstractness, has traditionally been concerned

with human needs, and the therapeutic model may even fulfill this ideal.

Laymen, as well as philosophers, for example, are bothered by the thought

that their actions are determined not by themselves but by prior conditions.

This is a problem that, if the therapeutic view is correct, rests on the

misunderstanding of such concepts as causation, responsibility, and action,

which need clarification.

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Formal versus Ordinary Language

The role of language as a central concern of Analytic philosophers is the

dimension most involved in disputes about the methodology employed.

Philosophers outside the Analytic movement tend to think that its

preoccupation with language is a departure from philosophy as classically

conceived. Yet Plato and Aristotle, medieval philosophers, the Empiricists –

and, in fact, most of the philosophers whose works have been considered

important – have found it essential to talk about language. There are serious

differences, however, about what role language should play. One such

difference concerns the importance of formal languages (in the sense

employed in symbolic logic) for philosophical problems.

Development of Mathematical Logic

Since the time of Aristotle, logic has been allied to philosophy. Until the

late 19th century, however, logic was largely confined to formulating

elaborate rules for one fairly simple form of argument – the syllogism; and

there was a lack of systematic development of the subject along lines that had

been taken in mathematics since early times.

Almost from the beginning, mathematicians had rigorously exploited

two important techniques: (1) the use of the axiomatic method (as in Euclid’s

geometry) in developing the subject; and (2) the use of schematic letters or

variables for stating general truths in the subject (thus, one can write “A + B =

B + A,” in which any names or numbers whatsoever can be substituted for A

and B, and the result will still be true).