User:Peter Damian (original account)/Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy

This is a critique I wrote in early February 2007, of the Analytic philosophy article. Analytic philosophy is one of the most important movements of twentieth century Western philosophy, and deserves flagship status in a world-class internet publication like Wikipedia. Instead, it was a mess (it is a little improved since then). The version referred to is this.

1. The introduction contains no overall characterisation of what analytic philosophy is (by a 'characterisation' I mean a list of characateristics or features that would allow the reader easily to identify the characterised thing when he or she saw it, and also to identify anything else as not being the characterised thing). It says it is a dominant philosophical movement (yes, but what are the distinguishing features, slogans, beliefs, methods of that movement), that its founders were Moore and Russell (who were they, asked the uninformed reader), that these in turn were influenced by Frege (who was he?) and that many leading analytics came from Germany and Austria (OK, but what actually is analytic philosophy?). There is then the usual Wiki list of analytic philosophers (fine, but who are these people and what do they do for a living – what actually is analytic philosophy?).
 * Nor is analytic philosophy properly a single movement, but rather a range of approaches to philosophical issues. The trouble is of course that there will be some exceptions to any proposed definition, which will be argued about until a bunch of weasel words are introduced, and then someone will edit those out, starting the cycle once again. Banno 01:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

2. Thus the introduction is practically useless. The next section is called 'The term analytic philosophy'. This begins by saying that a.p. includes ' logical positivism, logical atomism and ordinary language philosophy'. Fine, but what are these fields? What actually is a.p.? Then, even worse, it says that few analytic philosophers adhere to any of these. Right. And that it would be a mistake to equate any of these to analytic p. Fine. As a reader who came to this article without any idea of what this subject is, I am now well and truly in the dark.

3. The section goes on to talk about the methods which characterise a.p., which is the closest the article gets to saying what it is. That's good, but why did I, the naïve reader, have to wait so long? However, this bit is far from correct, as it is much too wide. It gives necessary conditions, such as clarity and precision, emphasis on argumentation &c, which characterise many philosophical schools apart from a.p. It does not mention the importance given by a.p. to formal methods of analysis (Russell's Theory of Descriptions as being a widely held paradigm for a.p., e.g.). The next two sentences (a.p. not being about 'meaning of life', and the stuff about focus and debate) are badly written, uncited and probably untrue.

4. The final part of this section says it began with Frege, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein. This repeats the introduction, is not properly part of this section anyway, and moreover fails to say what these philosophers actually did. It says that a.p. includes 'all those who work in their vein'. Yes, but what was their vein? The gentle reader is still in the dark.

5. The next section is called 'Relation to continental philosophy'. This is awkwardly written. It says the distinction is 'problematic', which is a bad way of beginning a section about something, and it says that it contrasts a method against a region. Possibly, but the reader still hasn't the faintest idea about what the analytic method actually is, so how does this help? There is a short passage about the The European Society for Analytic Philosophy, but it is unclear why it is in the section.

6. The next section is called 'Formalism and natural languages'. This starts with the unhelpful claim that 'Part of analytic approach is the clarification of philosophical problems by examining the language used to express them'. Yes, but how do analytics think this helps? Any informative answer would have to mention the two conflicting view on this held by analytics, namely 1. Ordinary language is misleading disguises its logical form, and that philosophical propositions become meaningless or trivial once we attempt to reduce them to the correct logical form. 2. Ordinary language is not misleading, and the correct logical form of ordinary language is ordinary language. However, 'philosophical propositions' are not ordinary language because they contain ersatz metaphysical terminology – once this terminology is analysed using plain language, we find it is meaningless nonsense (e.g. Geach's remarks on 'Nothing noths' in 'Mental Acts').

7. The next sentence 'Two major threads weave through this tradition: formalism and natural language' is poorly written and, once again, fails to explain the issue, which is the two threads mentioned in (6) above (formalism = the belief that analysis should be reduction of ordinary language to logical form, natural language = the view that ordinary language is not misleading, but metaphysical language is.  The next sentence attempts to clarify this by saying ' The former seeks to understand language, and hence philosophical problems, by making use of formal logic.'.  Yes, but for goodness' sake how?   It then says 'it seeks to formalize the way in which philosophical statements are made'.  This does not explain why formalist analytic p's would do this, namely (as just explained above) to show that the problem disappears on reduction, because the p. statement either is shown to be trivial, or cannot be so reduced, thus meaningless.

8. The sentence that follows deserves quoting in full, because it is such WP:BOLLOCKS.


 * This has led to a number of successes, including modern logic, recognizing the primary importance of sense and reference in the construction of meaning, Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions, Karl Popper's theory of falsificationism and Alfred Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth.

What? The statement that this (whatever this is, presumably the 'two threads' first mentioned) led to modern logic is either nonsense, or wrong. What is meant by 'modern logic'. If it means first order predicate calculus, most of the development of this took place very early on (Frege and Peirce gave us most of it), was complete by the 1920's, and in any case took place in parallel with anything else that happened in the Analytic tradition. The phrase 'recognizing the primary importance of sense and reference in the construction of meaning' is gobbledegook. What follows returns to the usual list-salad – things mentioned to show the erudition of the writer, without any context or explanation. The mention of the Theory of Descriptions is good, as it is the paradigm of the analytic method (said Ramsey). But, er, what actually is the Theory of Descriptions? And what is the Incompleteness Theorem, the theory of falsificationism (sic), the Semantic Theory of Truth. Obscurum per obscurius.

9. Then we have "The other thread seeks to understand philosophical ideas by a close and careful examination of the natural language used to express them – usually with some emphasis on the importance of common sense in dealing with difficult concepts." But why do OLP's do this? And the mention of common sense here seems to confuse earlier methods of philosophy (Reid, Berkeley) with the underlying principles of OLP. The statement that 'These two threads intertwine, sometimes implacably opposed to each other, sometimes virtually identical' was clearly intended as a masterpiece of prose, but quite out of place in an encyclopedia article. The statement 'Famously, Wittgenstein started out in the formalism camp, but ended up in the natural language camp.' is probably the only accurate statement in the article, but of course without clear and accurate statements of what "formalism camp" and "natural language camp" represent, it is completely meaningless.

10. The next section is called 'Formalism'. The first subsection is called 'Logical atomism'. It opens with the oft-repeated statement that analytic philosophy has its origins in Gottlob Frege’s development of predicate logic. This adds a little to the many statements that went before, but only a little. What is predicate logic? Does this not conflict with the earlier statement about 'modern logic' developing as a result of the analytic movement. It contains the blatantly false claim that 'This permitted a much wider range of sentences to be parsed into logical form.' This is debatable: some (e.g. Sommers, plural quantificationists) hold that predicate calculus in the form developed by Frege is more restrictive than the old traditional logic, other (e.g. Wittgenstein II) held that the logical form of ordinary language is ordinary language.

11. Next there is a potentially useful remark about Russell's use of predicate calculus to analyse the word 'is. But it is too far out of context to be useful

12. There is another allusion to the Theory of Descriptions in the sentence "Russell sought to resolve various philosophical issues by applying such clear and clean distinctions, most famously in the case of the Present King of France." Good God. We are nearly there, we have nearly arrived at the paradigm itself. But the term 'Theory of Descriptions' is missing. And how does 'the Present King of France' connect with anything at all?

13. The next subsection is called "The Tractatus". It correctly state that "As a young Austrian soldier, Ludwig Wittgenstein expanded and developed Russell's logical atomism into a comprehensive system in a brief book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Presumably the remark about 'Austrian soldier' is the work of the editor whose subtle hand may be detected throughout the article, and who covertly maintains that there is no such thing as 'continental philosophy' because it was really all the work of the Austrians and others. But only an insider will know that. And what, again, is 'logical atomism'? Then it continues with some summary doctrines of the Tractatus. Obscurum per obscurius again. The Tractatus is a famously opaque and difficult book. How does it help our grandmother, whose complete understanding of the basics of analytic philosophy should be the intended result of this article, to repeat the sybilline pronouncements of one of the most difficult books ever written? 'A picture of the world can be built up by expressing atomic facts in atomic propositions'. Indeed.

14.  There follows a brief mention of the 'limits of my language mean the limits of my world'. Now this is really important. The philosophical doctrine which underlies all of Wittgenstein's philosophy, in all periods, is that the result of philosophy is not a number of 'philosophical propositions' [philosophische Sätze], but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred. This is one of the central ideas of analytic philosophy, and is a manifesto of positivism. But it occurs too late, and might be confused with a brief subsection about the biography of one of its leading figures.

15. The sentence 'Wittgenstein thought he had set out the 'final solution' to all philosophical problems, and so went off to become a school teacher' is 1066-ish, and moreover conceals the importance of the section by disguising it as biography. (Actually, an insider will understand it is not really biography, as W's decision to do this is deeply connected with the 'limits of language' thing. But this will only be obvious to insiders, whereas the article should clearly explain analytic philosophy to outsiders and grandmothers.

16. "However, he later revisited the inadequacy of logical atomism, and further expanded the philosophy of language by his posthumous book Philosophical Investigations." Pure 1066.

17. The section "Natural language semantics" helpfully explains that "This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it." Indeed.

18. The section "Reaction against idealism" is another stub.

19. The section "Ordinary language philosophy" refers us to another article. (Main article: Ordinary language philosophy).

20. There is a brief mention of the Oxford school (list of philosophers), and contains the frightful sentence "Rather than viewing philosophical problems with respect to logic, ordinary language philosophy sets forth the notion of consideration with respect to the ordinary usage of the linguistic terms germane to such problems. "  Word salad.

21. A bit of OR "While schools such as logical positivism focus on logical terms, supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. It may be argued, then, that ordinary language philosophy is of a more sociological grounding, as it essentially focuses on the use of language within social contexts."

22. The section entitled " Logical positivism and logical empiricism" is a list, and contains no verb anywhere in sight.

23. "Philosophy of mind and cognitive science"  Stub.

24. The section "Ethics in analytic philosophy" is helpful in that it explains how and why the analytic tradition initially had little to say on the subject of ethics. This, relatively speaking, is the best section of the article, but that isn't really saying much.

25. "Political philosophy" is both listy and short.

26. "Analytical Marxism" is interesting, but I know nothing about the subject, so won't comment.

27. "Communitarianism", likewise. These final sections are generally better than anything that goes before, but you could hardly blame the average reader for not venturing this far. It was a pretty brave and intrepid expedition on my part, I felt, to get to the very end of this ignoble article about a noble and great tradition.

Dbuckner 08:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * All good points. Have you had a look at the German page? The four "phases" are a bit dubious, but an historical approach would be the best way to go; as brief as possible, of course, with links to the main articles. I intend to fiddle around the edges for a few days, and look forward to any other contributions.   Banno 08:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I strongly agree with DBuckner's points. This article is more laundry list than coherent, and is riddled with bad writing and basic errors.  It's also worth noting that analytic philosophy post-1970 is so broad and diverse as to resist an easy overview. 271828182 14:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)