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
328
It is surprising that logicians through the ages failed to grasp the power
of the use of schematic letters. When they finally began to employ these and
other mathematical techniques, they made great contributions to man’s
understanding of the subject.
Among the developments that occurred in the 19th century, primarily
through the work of mathematicians, those of the Englishman George Boole,
creator of Boolean algebra, and of Georg Cantor, the Russian-born creator of
set theory, are especially important inasmuch as they gave promise of bringing
logic and mathematics closer together. The one figure who was both a
mathematician and a philosopher and so might be credited with the marriage
of logic as a philosophical subject with the techniques of mathematics was
Gottlob Frege (died 1925), of the University of Jena in Germany. Historically,
Frege, whose works are now appreciated in their own right, was important
principally for his influence on Bertrand Russell, whose monumental work,
Principia Mathematica (1910-13), written in collaboration with Alfred North
Whitehead, together with Russell’s earlier Principles of Mathematics (1903),
awakened philosophers to the fact that the use of mathematical techniques in
logic might prove to be of great importance for philosophy. Its symbolism had
the advantage of being closely connected with ordinary language, whereas its
rules can be precisely formulated. Moreover, work in symbolic logic has
produced many distinctions and techniques that can be applied to ordinary
language.
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Divergence of Ordinary Language from Formal Logic
Ordinary language, however, seems to differ from the artificial language
of symbolic logic in more respects than its lack of precisely stated rules. On
the surface, it often appears to violate the rules of symbolic logic. In the
English statement “If this is gold [symbolized by p], then this will dissolve in
aqua regia [symbolized by q],” for example, which in symbolic logic is
expressed in a form known as the material conditional, p ⊃ q (in which ⊃
means “If... then… “), one of the rules is that the statement is true whenever
“This is gold” is false. In ordinary language, on the contrary, one would not
count the statement as true merely on formal logical grounds but only if there
were some real connection in the world of chemical reactions between being
gold and dissolving in aqua regia – a connection that plays no role in symbolic
logic.
Among Analytic philosophers the existence of many such apparent
divergences between symbolic logic and ordinary language has generated
attitudes ranging from complete mistrust of symbolic logic as relevant to
nonartificial languages to the position that ordinary language is not a proper
vehicle for the rigorous statement of scientific truths.
Interpretations of the Relation of Logic to Language
Symbolic logic has been viewed by many Analytic philosophers as
providing the framework for an ideal or perfect language. This statement can
be taken in two ways:
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1. Russell and the early Wittgenstein thought of logic as revealing, in a
precise fashion, the real structure of any language. Any seeming departure
from this structure in ordinary language must therefore be attributed to the fact
that its surface grammar fails to reveal its real structure and is apt to be
misleading. As a corollary, philosophers who have held this view have often
explained philosophical problems as arising from being taken in by the
surface features of the language. Because of the similarity of sentences such
as “Tigers bite” and “Tigers exist,” for example, the verb “to exist” may seem
to function, as other verbs do, to predicate something of the subject. It may
seem, then, that existence is a property of tigers just as their biting is. In
symbolic logic, however, the symbolic equivalent of the two sentences would
be quite different; existence would not be represented by a symbol for a
predicate but by what is called the existential quantifier, (∃ x), which means
“There exists at least one x such that....”
2. The other sense in which symbolic logic has been seen as the
framework of an ideal language is exemplified in the work of Rudolf Carnap,
a 20th-century semanticist, who was concerned with what the best language –
especially the best for the purposes of science – is.
One distinctive feature of the formal language of Principia Mathematica
is that it becomes, when interpreted, a language of true-or-false statements. In
ordinary language, on the contrary, one is not restricted to statements of
truths; in it one can also issue commands, ask questions, make promises,
express beliefs, give permission, and assert necessities and possibilities.
Consequently, many philosophers have developed nonstandard logics that
incorporate the nonassertoric features of language. Thus, various systems of
logic have been formulated and studied.
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On the other side of the coin, many philosophers – most notably the later
Wittgenstein and those influenced by him – have thought that attempting to
put language into the straitjacket of a formal system is to falsify the way that
language works. Language performs a multitude of tasks, and even among
expressions that seem to be alike in the way they function – those sentences,
for example, that one might think are used simply for expressing facts –
examination of their actual use reveals many differences: differences, for
instance, in what is counted as showing them to be true or false and in their
relationships to other parts of language. Formal systems, according to this
view, at best oversimplify and at worst can lead to philosophical problems
generated by supposing that all language operates strictly according to a
simple set of rules. Accordingly, far from settling philosophical disputes by
getting underneath the misleading exterior of ordinary language, formal
systems add their own share of confusion.
Early History of Analytic Philosophy
Reaction Against Idealism
During the last decades of the 19th century, English philosophy was
dominated by an absolute Idealism that stemmed from the German
philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. For English philosophy this represented a break in
an almost solid tradition of Empiricism. The seeds of modern Analytic
philosophy were sown when two of the most important figures in its history,
Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, broke with Idealism at the turn of the 20th
century.
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Absolute Idealism was avowedly metaphysical in the sense that its
adherents thought of themselves as describing, in a way not open to scientists,
certain very fundamental truths about the world. Indeed, what pass for truths
in the sciences, were, in their view, not really truths at all; for the scientist
must, perforce, treat the world as composed of distinct objects and can only
describe and state the relationships supposedly holding among them. But the
Idealists held that to talk about reality as if it were a multiplicity of objects is
to falsify it; in the end only the whole, the absolute, has reality.
In their conclusions and, most importantly, in their methodology, the
Idealists were decidedly not on the side of commonsense intuition. Thus, a
Cambridge philosopher, J.M.E. McTaggart, argued that the concept of time is
inconsistent and cannot therefore be exemplified in reality. British
Empiricism, on the other hand, had always thought of common sense as an
ally and science as the model of the way in which to find out about the world.
Even when their views might seem out of step with common sense, the
Empiricists were generally concerned to reconcile the two.
One can hardly claim that Analytic philosophers have universally
thought of themselves as on the side of common sense and much less that
metaphysical conclusions (on the ultimate nature of reality) are absent from
their writings. But there is in the history of the Analytic movement a strong
antimetaphysical strain, and its exponents have generally assumed that the
methods of science and of everyday life are the authentic ways of finding out
the truth.
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Founding Fathers: Moore and Russell
The first break from the Idealist view that the physical world is really
only a world of appearances occurred when Moore, in a paper, “The Nature of
Judgment” (1899), argued for a theory of truth that implies that the physical
world has the independent existence that, apart from philosophical theories, it
is naively supposed to have. Though the theory was soon abandoned, it did
represent a return to common sense.
The influences on Russell and Moore – and thus their methods of
dealing with problems – soon diverged, and their different approaches became
the roots of two broadly different methodologies in the Analytic tradition.
Russell was a major influence on those who approached philosophical
problems armed with the technical equipment of formal logic, who saw the
physical sciences as the only means of gaining knowledge of the world, and
who regarded philosophy – if a science at all – as a deductive and a priori
enterprise on a par with mathematics. Russell’s contributions to this side of
the Analytic tradition have been important and, in great part, lasting.
Moore, on the other hand, never found much need to employ technical
tools or to turn philosophy into a science. His dominant themes were (1) the
defense of commonsensical views about the nature of the world against
esoteric, sceptical, or grandly metaphysical views and (2) the conviction that
the right way to approach philosophical puzzles is to ask exactly what the
question is that generated the puzzle before trying to solve it. Philosophical
problems, he thought, are often intractable because philosophers have not
stopped to formulate precisely what is at issue.
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G.E. Moore
Because of these two themes, Moore enlisted much more sympathy
among Analytic philosophers from the 1930s and onward who were followers
of Wittgenstein’s later writings, of Gilbert Ryle’s postwar The Concept of
Mind, and of John Austin’s work. These philosophers, like Moore, saw little
hope in advanced formal logic as a means of solving traditional philosophical
problems and believed that philosophical scepticism about the existence of an
independent external world or of other minds – or, in general, about what men
label as common sense – must be wrong. The followers of Wittgenstein also
shared with Moore the belief that it is often more important to look at the
questions that philosophers pose than at their proposed answers. Thus, unlike
Russell, who was important for his solutions in formal logic and ideal models
of language, it was more the spirit of Moore’s conception of philosophy than
its lasting contributions that makes him a seminal influence.
The Idealists were given to arguing for what, in Moore’s eyes, were
outrageous positions. Thus, in his essay “A Defense of Common Sense”
(1925), as in others, his defense was not only against such Idealist doctrines as
the unreality of time but also against any of the forms of scepticism – about
the existence of other minds or of a material world – that philosophers have
espoused. The skeptic, he pointed out, usually has some argument for his
conclusion. Instead of examining such arguments, however, Moore pitted
against the skeptic’s premises quite everyday beliefs, such as, for example,
that he had breakfast that morning (thus time cannot be unreal) or that he does
in fact have a pencil in his hand (thus there must be a material world). His
challenge to the skeptic is to show that the premises of the skeptic’s argument
are more certain than the everyday beliefs that form Moore’s premises.
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Although some commentators have seen Moore as an early practitioner
of the appeal to “ordinary language,” his appeal was really not to what it is
proper to say but rather to the beliefs of common sense. His rejection of
anything that offends against common sense, however, was influential not
only in the release that it afforded from the metaphysical excesses of absolute
Idealism but also in its impact on the continuing attitudes of most Analytic
philosophers – even though they may have given it a linguistic turn.
Moore was also important for his vision of the proper business of
philosophy – analysis. He was puzzled about what is the proper analysis of “X
sees Y,” in which Y designates a physical object (e.g., a pencil). There must be
a special sense of “see,” in which one does not see the pencil but only part of
its surface. And finally – and most importantly – there is also a sense in which
what is directly perceived is not even the surface of the pencil but, rather,
what Moore called “sense data” and which earlier Empiricists had called
“visual sensations” or “sense impressions.” Moore’s problem was to discern
the relationships among these various elements in perception and, in
particular, to discover how a person can be justified, as Moore fully believed
he is, in his claims to see physical objects when what he immediately
perceives are really sense data. The idea that sense impressions form the
immediate objects of perception has played a large role in Analytic
philosophy, showing once again its Empiricist roots. It later became an
important source of division, however, among the Logical Positivists. Most
post-World War II Oxford philosophers, however, together with those closely
influenced by Wittgenstein’s later work, have found sense data to be as
unpalatable and unwarranted as Moore had found McTaggert’s doctrine of the
unreality of time to be.
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Bertrand Russell
One of the recurring themes in philosophy is the idea that the subject
needs to be given a new methodology. Among Empiricists this has often
meant making it more scientific. From an early date, Russell enunciated this
viewpoint (which was not shared by Moore), finding in the techniques of
symbolic logic a measure of reassurance that philosophy might be put on a
new basis. Russell did not see the philosopher, however, as merely a logician.
Symbolic logic might provide the framework for a perfect language, but the
content of that language is something else. The job of the philosopher is – for
Russell, as it was for Moore – analysis. But the purpose is somewhat different.
In most of Russell’s work, analysis has the task of uncovering the necessary
assumptions – especially about the kinds of things that exist – for a
description of the world as it is. For the most part this description is the one
that science gives and is therefore realistic. Thus, Russell’s use of analysis
was openly metaphysical.
The question then arises of how philosophical analysis, which is
concerned with how men talk about the world, can presume to give any
answers about how the world is. The search for an answer begins with the
above-mentioned theory of descriptions – a theory that seems to be closely
tied to linguistic concerns. It will be recalled that Russell considered that such
definite descriptions as “the author of ‘On Denoting’ “ are not really
expressions used to refer to things in the world but that, instead, they make the
statements in which they occur into quite general propositions about the
world, to the effect that one and only one thing of a certain sort exists and that
it has a certain property. Because there must be some way, however, of
directly speaking of the things in the world, Russell turned his attention to
proper names. The name Aristotle, for example, does not seem to carry any
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descriptive content. But Russell argues, on the contrary, that ordinary names
are really concealed definite descriptions (“Aristotle” may simply mean “The
student of Plato who taught Alexander, wrote the Metaphysics, etc.”). If a
name had no descriptive content, one could not sensibly ask about the
existence of its bearer, for one could then not understand what is expressed by
a statement involving it. If “Bosco” were a name in this sense (without any
descriptive content), then merely to understand the statement that Bosco exists
or the statement that Bosco does not exist presupposes that one already knows
what the name Bosco refers to. But then there cannot be any genuine question
about Bosco’s existence, for just to understand the question one must know
the thing to which the name refers. Ordinary proper names, however –
Russell, Homer, Aristotle, and Santa Claus – as Russell pointed out, are such
that it makes sense to question the existence of their bearers. Thus, ordinary
names must be concealed descriptions and cannot be the means of directly
referring to the particular things in the world.
Names in the strict logical sense, then, are very rare; Russell, in fact,
suggests that in English the only possible candidates are the demonstrative
pronouns, this and that. Yet, if men are ever to talk about the actual things in
the world directly, there must be the possibility of such demonstrative
expressions underlying their language – in their private thoughts about the
world if not in their public language.
To this point, Russell had concluded that things in the world can be
talked about only through the medium of a special kind of name; in particular,
one about which no question can arise whether it names something or not. At
this point there was a transition from questions about the nature of language to
results about the nature of the world. Russell asked what sort of thing it is that
can be named in the strict logical sense, that can be known and talked about,