Philosophy Today
- Philosophy 1
- Spring, 2002
- G. J. Mattey
|
The Great Divide
- Most contemporary philosophers follow one of two approaches
- "Continental" philosophy
- "Analytic" philosophy
- Continental philosophy is more influential on the European continent
- Analytic philosophy is predominant in the major research universities in the English-speaking world
|
Analytic Philosophy
- Analytic philosophy developed from attempts in the early 20th century to make our concepts precise
- The model of this procedure was science
- Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was a leading positivist, who held that what is not analytic or scientifically verifiable is meaningless
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) eventually held that analyses do not yield precise results and held that philosophy is merely therapeutic
|
Analytic Philosophy Today
- Emphasis in contemporary analytic philosophy is on language and meaning, and meaning is understood as a relation between language and objective reality
- Thus, understanding the structure of language is what reveals the structure of reality
- We now have powerful symbolic tools to aid us
- Saul Kripke (1940- ) led a revival of metaphysics by making hyper-scientific concepts precise
|
Continental Philosophy
- Immanuel Kant's "Copernican revolution" made the human point of view primary
- This revolution was carried on German philosophers in the 19th century, culminating in Nietzsche
- In the early 20th century, Edmund Husserl invented "phenomenology"
- This was developed by Martin Heidegger and Sartre into "existentialism"
|
Continental Philosophy Today
- Work in phenomenology and existentialism continues to be done
- The main thrust in continental philosophy today follows Nietzsche
- Michel Foucault (1926-1984) understood knowledge as practice, and practice as based on relations of power
- Jacques Derrida (1930- ) promotes "deconstruction" and opposes "logocentrism"
|
Academic Culture Clash
- Analytic philosophers accuse continental philosophers of sloppy, or even meaningless, thinking
- Continental philosophers accuse analytic philosophers of petty narrowness and detachment from real human concerns
|
Roots of the Clash
- The clash between contemporary continental and analytic philosophers is foreshadowed in the clash between the Sophists and Socrates
- The Sophists emphasized the use of language as a tool to further human interest, but not as revealing an objective reality
- Socrates demanded an account of the real form which provides the meaning of the use of concepts
|
Formal Philosophy
- Symbolic logic allows the formulation of philosophical statements and arguments in a rigorous, unambiguous format
- Leibniz was the first philosopher to try this
- Russell's 1905 "On Denoting" showed its great potential
- Probability calculus is a formalization of principles of inductive reasoning
- Decision theory is based on probability calculus
|
What Analytic Philosophers Do
- Conceptual analysis is done in the style of the Euthyphro
- E.g., knowledge is justified true belief that is not accidental
- Philosophical theories are constructed in the style of Utilitarianism or Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals
- Much activity is directed at the question of the possibility of analysis and theorizing
|
Reflective Equilibrium
- Mill posed the problem of the analysis of ethical judgments
- We need to know what right and wrong are before we can judge an act right or wrong
- But scientific method requires that we know particulars first
- Nelson Goodman proposed a solution
- Begin with our beliefs about particulars
- Determine how well they conform to general beliefs
- Reflectively adjust the two kinds of beliefs until they reach a state of equilibrium
|
Issues in Metaphysics
- Most current issues in analytic metaphysics are the same as the classical issues
- Are universals and numbers real, or are concrete particulars the only reality?
- Is causality only constant conjunction or a real relation?
- Can things be other than what they actually are, or are they determined to be what they are?
|
Supervenience
- Many philosophers are attracted to the view that the human mind is a material entity
- But there are problems in explaining mental activity as identical to brain states, etc.
- A proposed solution is that mental activity supervenes on physical states of the body
- Two brain states of the same type cannot differ with respect to the associated mental activity
|
Issues in Epistemology
- How should knowledge be analyzed?
- Should we approach knowledge inside-out (Descartes, Hume, Russell) or outside-in, so that human knowledge is a natural development to be studied scientifically?
- How do we make sense of the persuasive power of philosophical skepticism?
|
Contextualism
- We seem to assume that we have knowledge ordinarily but take back that assumption when thinking of skeptical arguments
- This can be explained by claiming that we have knowledge in the ordinary context but lose it in the skeptical context
- This is similar to Hume's view that we have belief in the ordinary context and lose our confidence when thinking of skeptical arguments
|
Issues in Ethics
- Ethical investigations tend to be centered on one of three levels
- Meta-ethics concerns questions about the nature of moral values and how they can be known
- Ethical theories include utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Aristotelian-style virtue ethics
- Moral problems (e.g. abortion) are discussed in their own right or in relation to theories
|
The Difference Principle
- John Rawls has proposed a conception of justice as fairness
- In the case of distributive justice, justice is fair distribution of the goods of society
- But what is fair?
- We should conceive of ourselves as in a position of ignorance regarding our position in society
- In such a position, it would be reasonable for each of us to require that if a distribution is unequal, it must help the least advantaged
|
Progress?
- Has analytic philosophy made any progress?
- Philosophical problems, analyses and theories are subject to much more sophisticated and detailed treatment
- They tend, however, to be examined piecemeal, and not as part of a broader theoretical context
- Philosophers seem as far from agreement on more basic issues as they ever have been, even with all the new tools at their disposal
|