Analytic Philosophy

– ‘Analytic Philosophy’ is a branch and tradition of philosophy that uses logical analysis in determining the validity of statements and arguments. It has been popular in the Western world since the 20th century. This page seeks to address a range of concepts that forms this branch of philosophy.

INTRODUCTION

Since its beginnings in the 17th century, modern philosophy developed along two different lines – one on mainland Europe, and one in Britain. While European philosophers generally followed the example of Descartes’ rationalism, British philosophers were predominately empiricists.

In the 19th century, philosophy was dominated by German idealism, which flowed from the thinking of Immanuel Kant. However, at the turn of the 20th century, a new approach emerged in Britain that revived the distinction between British and “continental” philosophy. This was sparked by the work of Bertrand Russell on the link between mathematics and logic. What Russell (and the German mathematician Gottlob Frege) independently established was that logic, like mathematics, is not a human invention: it is not merely a method we have devised to present arguments but is instead a system of rules that are universally valid, regardless of human experience. As such, logic can provide us with a means of establishing the validity of statements and arguments.

The implications of Russell’s discovery were profound. The link between logic and mathematics provided new methods of logical analysis and opened up a whole new field of philosophy, known as “analytic philosophy”. At the time, many philosophers were sceptical of traditional metaphysical philosophy, which, they argued, made claims that could be neither proved nor disproved. Now, they believed, they had the logical tools with which to examine arguments rigorously. According to Russell, the problem with traditional philosophy was that arguments had been presented in ordinary language, rather than in logical form, and this had led to ambiguity, inaccuracy, and confusion. In order to examine an argument properly, he claimed, it needed to be “translated” into the language of logic before being analysed. This revealed that many philosophical statements had no logical meaning, even if they made perfect grammatical sense.

One of Russell’s protégés, Ludwig Wittgenstein, went on to develop his own theory of meaning. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he dismissed as nonsense any statement that failed to “picture” something in the world. This idea was embraced by the “logical positivist” school, which argued that philosophers should analyse scientific claims only, leaving metaphysics to theologians. At the same time, advances in the natural sciences led many philosophers to examine science itself, raising questions over the nature of scientific truth. Wittgenstein, however, changed his mind about the nature of philosophy, and presented a second, radically different, theory of language – one that abandoned the idea that words are pictures of objects. Others, too, rejected the constraints of strict analytic philosophy, recognising that ordinary language also has a place in philosophical enquiry.

WHAT DOES A WORD MEAN?

Widely regarded as the founder of analytical philosophy, the German philosopher Gottlob Frege greatly advanced the philosophy of language by distinguishing between the “sense” and “reference” of a word.

Sense and reference

Frege (1848–1925) noted that when we look at the sky just before sunrise and just after sunset, we see a bright star in each case. Traditionally, these stars have been known as the Morning Star and the Evening Star respectively, but astronomers have shown that they are in fact the same object: the planet Venus.

For Frege, this raised an interesting question: If the meaning of a word is an object it refers to (a theory that had been popular for centuries) then how is it that the names “Morning Star” and “Evening Star” have two different meanings, when they refer to the same object? Frege argued that the example shows that we need to distinguish between the sense of a word and its reference – that is, between the meaning it carries and the object it refers to. He did not claim that the reference of a word is irrelevant to its meaning – indeed, it may be vitally important – but rather that it does not exhaust the entire meaning of a word.

Pioneering logic

According to Frege, the difference between the names “Morning Star” and “Evening Star” lies in their “mode of presentation” – that is, that each carries a different sense, or way of thinking about the object they refer to. We think differently about Venus in the two cases, namely, as “the bright star visible before sunrise” and “the bright star visible before sunset”. Even the times of day convey different moods – one of being early and one of being late. In other words, it is only in the context of whole sentences that words have a definite meaning.

Frege also showed that the statement “The Morning Star is the Morning Star” tells us nothing, whereas “The Morning Star is the Evening Star” not only states a truth but expresses knowledge that has been established by astronomers. Neither of these would be possible if the meaning of a word were simply its reference.

✔ NAMES AND MEANINGS

For centuries, philosophers believed that the meaning of a word is an object it refers to. However, Frege argued that this cannot be the case, and that we need to distinguish between a word’s reference (the object it refers to) and its sense (the meaning it has within the context of a sentence). Even the word “Aristotle” is not merely the name of a certain person who lived at a certain time: it is a word that has a whole host of meanings, including “the Greek thinker who pioneered philosophical language”. “Aristotle” is a word that has many senses, but a single, real-world reference.

“We let a sign express its sense and designates its denotation.” – Gottlob Frege, On Sense and Reference (1892)

The Morning Star: The phrase “Morning Star” refers to Venus as it looks in the morning.

The Evening Star: The phrase “Evening Star” refers to Venus as it looks in the evening.

Observing Venus

Frege argued that words have two aspects: their “reference”, or the object that they describe; and their “sense”, or the overall meaning that they convey. The expressions “Morning Star” and “Evening Star” have different senses but share the same reference: the planet Venus.

Venus

Although it looks like a star, Venus is in fact a planet. It is visible in the morning or the evening, depending on its position in the sky. 

RUSSELL’S THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS

British philosopher Betrand Russell built on the work of Gottlob Frege and used formal logic to reveal the underlying structure of common linguistic expressions.

Underlying logic

Russell (1872–1970) argued that grammar of ordinary language, such as its nouns and adjectives, can hide the underlying logic of expressions. He believed that many philosophical problems can be solved by translating what is said in ordinary language into terms that express this underlying logic.

For example, Russell argued that a proper name, such as “John”, takes its meaning from the person it refers to. And so, when we say, “John is bald”, we ascribe a property (baldness) to John. Russell contrasts these with the phrases “The King of France”, and “The King of France is bald”, which have similar grammatical structure, but a different underlying logic. For Russell, “The King of France” is not a name, but what he called a “definite description” – that is, a phrase that describes a property of something that has yet to be identified. Russell noted that the statement “The King of France is bald” (like its negation, “The King of France is not bald”) is neither true nor false because there is no King of France. Moreover, he argued that, being neither true nor false, it is logically meaningless.

Russell proposed that the way to make sense of the statement is to break it down into its constituent logical propositions. He identified three of these: there is a thing that is the King of France; no more than one thing is the King of France; and if anything is the King of France, then it is bald. Together, these propositions are the logical elements of the statement “The King of France is bald”.

Russell concluded that it is only once we know the logic of such statements that their meaning and truth value can be assessed.

“A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles.” – Betrand Russell, On Denoting (1905)

Logical analysis

Russell considered whether the statement “The King of France is bald” involves an existential claim that states that a certain thing exists, and that it has a certain characteristic.

[1] “The King…” – This tells us one and only one king is being referred to.

[2] “… of France…” – This identifies the king as the King of France.

[3] “… is bald.” – This tells us that if there is a King of France, then he is bald.

🔎 EXISTENCE IS NOT A PROPERTY

Russell argued that many philosophical problems arise from assuming that “existence” is a property of things. What he means is that when we say, for example, that a unicorn is horse-like and has a horn on its head, we are describing properties that collectively are the unicorn. However, when we say it “exists”, we are not adding to the unicorn’s properties – we are simply saying that something in the world has the properties of a unicorn. Likewise, if “existence” were a property, then the claim that unicorns do not exist would mean that something exists that has the property of non-existence. Russell’s claim could be seen to undermine many traditional arguments, such as Anselm’s proof of God’s existence.

PICTURING THE WORLD

Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the major influential philosophers of the 20th century. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he presented what came to be called his picture theory of meaning.

Mirroring reality

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein (1889–1951) examined the nature of language with a view to tracing the limits of what we can know and talk about. He was apparently inspired by the way traffic accidents were reconstructed in Paris court rooms at the time he was writing – using toys to represent the cars and people involved. Wittgenstein believed that language works in a similar way – that it enables us to “picture” the world, which is made up of facts, which are an existing combination of objects. For example, the words “grass” and “green” are the building blocks of the meaningful statement “The grass is green”, which is a picture of a fact in the world.According to Wittgenstein, statements that cannot be reduced to atomic propositions are effectively nonsense, because they fail to describe reality. The propositions of science, therefore, have sense, whereas those of ethics and aesthetics – statements of value – do not. However, for Wittgenstein, “nonsense” did not mean “worthless”. Rather, he said that ethical statements try to say “things that cannot be put into words… They are what is mystical.” They are, as he put it, attempts to say what can only be shown.

Wittgenstein believed that the philosopher’s role was to distinguish sense from nonsense, and to help to construct a clear and logical language. He said that language and the world mirror each other, and that logic enables us to correct any apparent mismatch between the two. He argued further that philosophers had generated a great deal of confusion by failing to understand the pictorial nature of language, and that the whole of metaphysics – which dwells on things that transcend the physical world – was misguided.

🔎 SAYING AND SHOWING

Wittgenstein claimed that a meaningful statement is one that contains “atomic” statements, or pictures of facts in the world. However, he also distinguished between “saying” and “showing”, arguing that while his theory of meaning defined the boundaries of what can be said, there are other kinds of insights that can only be “shown”. This means that not everything that lies outside the strict bounds of “sense” is worthless. For example, things can be shown in literature, art, and music that can never be said directly. Our moral and aesthetic judgements are attuned to what is shown in what Wittgenstein described as a “mystical” way.

Atoms of meaning

Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning is often described as “logical atomism”, for it states that a meaningful proposition is one that is based on “atomic” statements that relate to the observable world. If a sentence cannot be analysed into these atomic statements, it is meaningless. For Wittgenstein, language enables us to form pictures of the world, which we share with one another. Therefore, when we understand each other, it is because we share the same pictures of the world.

“It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)

MEANINGFUL

[1] I’m on a beach – If someone is alone on a beach, they can share that fact via language. Language is like a camera that takes pictures of the world.

[2] “I’m on a beach” – If someone says, “I’m on a beach”, their words are representations of themselves and the beach, and picture them and the world around them.

[3] “She’s on a beach” – When two people understand each other, they share the same pictures of the world.

MEANINGLESS

[4] “The beach is romantic” – According to Wittgenstein, words depict things in the world. However, they do not depict values, such as “romantic”.

MEANING AND OBSERVATION

In the mid-20th century, a group of thinkers known as the Vienna Circle proposed that only logical truths and statements about the physical world have meaning. Their position became known as logical positivism.

The verification principle

Logical positivism was heavily influenced by Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning. Its central rule was the “verification principle”, according to which a statement only has meaning if it is logically true or can be verified by observation. The goal of logical positivism was to rid philosophy of speculation and to bring it in line with modern science.

In 1936, British philosopher A.J. Ayer (1910–89) published a famous defence of logical positivism. In Language, Truth, and Logic, he argued that only empirical, tautological, or mathematical statements are meaningful – that is, those that can be verified by observation, logic, or mathematics. He was influenced by Hume’s distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas, and argued that statements that are neither of these are not merely wrong, but meaningless. Ethical statements, for example, such as “Killing is wrong”, do not express meaningful ideas (which, according to Ayer, must relate to the physical world), but emotions. Such expressions are meaningless, although they may serve to stir people’s sympathies or to change their behaviour.

“…all utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.” – A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)

Meaningful statements

According to logical positivism, there are two types of meaningful sentence: logical statements (such as “Purple is a colour”) and factual statements (such as “It’s raining outside”). In the following example, four statements are made, but only two of them pass the positivists’ test of meaning – namely, that they are either logical truths or relate to the observable world. The other two statements are meaningless.

[1] Meaningless Statement – That’s a lovely coat.

[2] Meaningless Statement – Lying is wrong.

[3] Logical Statement – Yellow is a colour.

[4] Factual Statement – It’s raining.

MEANINGFUL OR MEANINGLESS

According to logical positivism, statements [3] and [4] above are meaningful because one (“Yellow is a colour”) is logically true, and the other (“It’s raining”) is about the world. However, statements [1] and [2] are neither true nor false, but meaningless.

DISPENSING WITH METAPHYSICS

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) believed that philosophers had spent too much time speculating about the nature of reality. Instead, he proposed that philosophers should restrict themselves to analysing language only.

Logic and language

A member of the Vienna Circle and an admirer of Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning, Rudolf Carnap believed that philosophy should be a rigorous, empirical discipline. He studied both Frege and Russell and concluded that statements made in ordinary language can be ambiguous and so lead to philosophical confusion.

However, like Russell, Carnap believed that such confusion can be avoided by using logical analysis, which reveals the underlying logic of ordinary language. Indeed, he thought that philosophers had caused a great deal of confusion by using language ambiguously instead of restricting themselves to analysing language itself. For Carnap, philosophers should clarify language in the same way that physicists explain the world – by revealing its fundamental laws, only in the philosopher’s case the laws revealed are those of logic.

Philosophy and science

Carnap’s main aim was to bring an end to metaphysics – that is, the discussion of ideas that do not relate to the physical world. He used the verification principle to argue that since metaphysical statements cannot be verified by experience, they are meaningless. For example, the concepts of “God” and “soul” transcend experience, and so the statements “God is good” and “The soul survives death” are strictly meaningless. They are examples of what Carnap calls “pseudo-sentences”, or sentences that appear to have sense, but in fact have no content whatsoever. For Carnap, it was impossible to conceive any sort of experience or observation that would support a metaphysical claim, and so the metaphysical theories of the past should be abandoned. These included Plato’s theory of the Forms, Descartes’s notion of the cogito, and Hegel’s concept of Geist. According to Carnap, all of these violate the rule that an idea must relate to the physical world for it to have meaning.

In The Logical Structure of the World (1928), Carnap argued that a genuine philosophical statement is neither true nor false, but simply a clarification of a scientific concept. In other words, philosophers should not construct theories about the world. Such theories are the business of science, and they should stand or fall on the basis of physical evidence alone.

🔎 VALUE JUDGEMENTS

According to Carnap, ethical and aesthetic statements, like metaphysical claims, are meaningless because they fail to describe the world. If someone says, “It is raining outside”, they are saying that a certain state of affairs exists, and we can check to see if they are right. However, if someone says, “Rain is beautiful”, or “Stealing is wrong”, there is no equivalent thing in the world that the words “beautiful” and “wrong” relate to. For Carnap, this renders the words neither true nor false, but meaningless.

Truth, sense, and nonsense

According to the verification principle, a statement is meaningful if it is true by definition (for example, “Triangles have three sides”) or if it can be backed up by experience (for example, “This triangle is blue”). Carnap argued that by these criteria metaphysics is meaningless and should therefore be eliminated. His theory of meaning was influenced by Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language, according to which sentences only have meaning if they can be reduced to statements about things in the world.

METAPHYSICS IS NONSENSE?

Scientific statements can be translated into logical language… ↓

“Triangles have three sides” (translates) SH → SSX2 Logic Computer ↓

… And so can observational statements ↓

“This triangle is blue” (translates) T35 → ✔ Logic Computer ↓

However, metaphysical statements cannot be translated… ↓

“Triangles exist outside time” (translates) → ERROR! Logic Computer ↓

And so, they are neither true nor false, but meaningless.

A PRIVATE LANGUAGE IS IMPOSSIBLE

In his book Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein overturned his own picture theory of meaning, arguing instead that the meaning of a word is its use.

The private language argument

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argued that the traditional idea of the meaning of a word being an object it refers to cannot be true. If it were true, he claimed, then a private language would be possible, for “meaning” would simply be a matter of an individual associating a word with an object. But, he argued, a private language is impossible.

Wittgenstein asks us to imagine someone growing up alone on a desert island. They might use the sounds “red” and “green” to distinguish between certain colours, but if they misused the sounds, they would not be aware of their mistake. Even if they set up a rule-book to help them, they would never know whether or not they were interpreting the rules correctly – they would need a rule-book for the rule-book, and so on. What they lack, Wittgenstein argued, is a community of language-users – for words require rules, and rules are necessarily public, shared conventions. Wittgenstein compared language to a game of chess: if we don’t know how to play then we cannot even start the game.

Wittgenstein’s argument undermined centuries of philosophical assumptions. René Descartes, who is widely regarded as one of the founders of modern philosophy, argued that he could doubt everything except that he was conscious – even the existence of other people. The private language argument claims that such a thought is impossible, for thoughts require words, and words depend on the existence of other people. It was an observation that had huge implications, particularly in the field of the philosophy of mind.

“The meaning of a word is its use in the language.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953)

🔎 PHILOSOPHY AS THERAPY

Wittgenstein compared his philosophy with certain aspects of psychotherapy, stating in Philosophical Investigations that “the philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness”. The illness, in this case, affects traditional philosophy, which was largely concerned with metaphysical questions, and the cure is the new (Wittgensteinian) way of thinking. For Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when we lose our way in language, or are tricked by “grammar” into thinking, for example, that the word “I” refers to a mental entity, or that “believing” is an internal process. Wittgenstein argued that philosophers should not construct theories to solve philosophical problems but should dissolve such problems by showing that they arise from the misuse of language.

Public and private

To understand Wittgenstein’s private language argument, consider the example of two orchards. In the first, public, orchard, the various fruits have names that are agreed upon and used in similar ways by everyone. In the second, private, orchard, the owner names the sensation he has when he sees an orange (in this case “apple) but has no way of checking that this is the correct name.

Public Orchard – Here, the words “orange” and “apple” have meanings: the community has established rules for their use.

Private Orchard – Here, in the world of one person, the sound “apple” lacks the community needed to establish rules for its use, and so has no meaning.

Wittgenstein’s Language-Games

In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the meaning of a word is its use in particular contexts. To explain this idea, he used the notion of “language-games”.

Language-games

Wittgenstein argued that a word only has meaning in the context of human activity. For example, to understand the word “bishop” in a game of chess is to know that a certain piece should be used in certain ways but not others. Wittgenstein argued that the same is true of all words: that to grasp their meanings is to know the rules for their use. This idea goes against the intuitive thought that the meaning of a word is an object that it refers to.

The word “art”, for example, seems to represent a single thing; in fact, it not only describes a wide range of activities, but also activities that do not have a single, essential thing in common. Instead, they have overlapping similarities that Wittgenstein called “family resemblances”. For example, when we say, “That film was a work of art”, we play a particular language-game in which “art” means something like “genius”. On the other hand, when we talk of “The art of painting”, we play a different game in which “art” means something like “discipline” or “profession”.

Indeed, we also use words to flatter, scold, or influence people, using phrases that have little or no literal meaning. Wittgenstein’s point was that any attempt to analyse language to reveal its essential structure is misguided because language has no essential structure. As Wittgenstein admitted, this reversed the view that he expressed in his earlier work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

“… think of the whole process of using words… as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953)

🔎 MEANING IS USE

According to Wittgenstein, the ability to understand words is not a matter of knowing exact rules and definitions, but rather of being able to use them in relevant contexts. There is no ultimate foundation for this activity: the meanings of words are defined by the ways in which we use them, and not the other way around. As Wittgenstein said: “If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do’.”

Many uses

For Wittgenstein, language has no essential nature, but is rather a network of interrelated language-games. Even the word “game” has no essential meaning but applies to numerous activities that have overlapping similarities.

Science and Falsification

The philosopher of science Karl Popper challenged one of our oldest ideas – namely, that scientists should construct theories and then show that they are true.

Science and pseudo-science

According to Popper (1902–94), a theory should only be called “scientific” if it is falsifiable – that is, if there are conditions under which it can be shown to be false. This undermines the idea that scientists should make theories and then demonstrate that they are true – a process that, Popper argued, gives credibility to all kinds of “pseudo-science”.

For Popper, an example of pseudo-science was Alfred Adler’s theory of “individual psychology”. Popper noted that if one man drowns a child and a second man dies to save a child, both, according to Adler, may be motivated by inferiority complexes – the first empowering himself by committing a crime, the second doing so by being selfless. Popper claimed that he could think of no human behaviour that could not be interpreted in terms of Adler’s theory, and that, far from proving the truth of the theory, this showed that it was not a theory at all – or at least, not a scientific hypothesis. Popper contrasted this with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which was scientific precisely because it was open to being falsified by observation. So far, however, the theory has yet to be refuted.

By claiming that science is a process of conjecture, Popper avoided the “problem of induction”, which states that scientific theories are unjustified because they cannot be proven to be true.

The problem-solving pursuit

Popper argued that science attempts to solve the practical problems of the world and does so by formulating theories and then performing experiments to test and falsify those theories. He believed that growth of scientific knowledge is thus the constant reformulation of theories that have been disproven by falsification. The best theories survive attempts at falsification, but this does not guarantee that they too will not be falsified in the future.

✔ FALSIFICATION AND VERIFICATION

Popper considered the statement “All swans are white”. “All swans” describes an infinite set of objects, so no matter how many white swans we observe, we can never prove the claim that all swans are white. However, we need only see a single non-white swan in order to falsify it. Falsification, then, has the merit of being achievable, whereas verification (proving a theory to be true) does not. Moreover, falsification reminds us of what science should be about – namely, disproving our provisional theories, rather than encouraging belief in things that cannot be proved. For Popper, the Marxist theory of history and Freud’s theory of the unconscious are in this sense unscientific.

[1] Potential scientific theories – For Popper, if a theory is falsifiable and supported by the evidence, then it can be accepted as the truth. However, since it may be falsified in the future, its truth is provisional. A theory that cannot be falsified is pseudo-science.

[2] Scientific theories – Newton’s law of gravity was scientific precisely because it could be tested or shown to be false. The same is true of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which amended Newton’s law.

[3] Pseudo-science – Theories that cannot be falsified are pseudo-science. For Popper, these included Freud’s theory of the unconscious, Adler’s theory of individual psychology, and the Marxist theory of history.

The Nature of Scientific Truth

American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine was critical of the idea that philosophers should limit themselves to analysing language. Instead, he proposed that philosophy is a branch of science.

Philosophy as science

Willard Quine (1908–2000) was a fierce critic of logical positivism, particularly its claim that philosophers should limit themselves to analysing language. However, he was also against the idea that philosophers should speculate about the nature of the world, or that philosophical knowledge is in any way different from scientific knowledge. For Quine, philosophy is effectively a branch of science, rather than a separate discipline that gives science its theoretical foundation. As he wrote: “It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described”.

Quine’s definition of “science” was broad, and included history, psychology, and sociology, which he saw as extensions of “common sense”. However, he considered physics to be the model for all knowledge: ultimately, everything can be understood in terms of physical processes.

Interconnected beliefs

According to Quine, human knowledge is an interconnected “web of belief”. Simple statements of observation, such as “it is snowing outside”, lie at the edge of this web, where they are formulated according to experience. The truth or falsity of such statements is easily checked. However, Quine argued that the same is not true of scientific statements, which are related to numerous other statements that make up an entire body of knowledge. In other words, scientific claims cannot be checked against experience in isolation of the theories that they belong to. Quine noted that this means that scientific statements cannot be accepted or rejected on the basis of evidence alone. Rather, they are judged according to their contribution to the strengths of a theory as a whole. Pragmatic considerations therefore play a pivotal role in how we assess scientific claims – such as how simple they are and how well they can be used to make predictions.

Among other things, Quine’s argument showed that the positivists’ claim that sentences can be meaningful on their own, independently of theory, is incoherent.

The web of belief

For Quine, knowledge is a web of interconnected beliefs. Logic and mathematics lie at the centre of the web, while observational statements lie on the periphery. Between these lie the theories that we construct to account for our experience. According to Quine, each statement depends on the entire web for its coherence.

🔎 ANALYTIC TRUTHS

In Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951), Quine attacked the positivists’ reliance on the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. According to this distinction, analytic statements are true by definition, while synthetic statements are true or false depending on the facts.

Quine argued that even the statement “All bachelors are unmarried men” (an apparently analytic statement) is only true because humans have had experience of what it is to be married. In other words, the word “bachelor” only has meaning in connection to a wider body of knowledge. Quine argued that the positivists ignore this connection when they claim that analytic statements are true independently of facts, and so can serve as the fundamental units of thought.

“No statement is immune to revision.” – Willard Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951)

Words as actions

The philosopher J.L. Austin (1911–60) argued that the meaning of a word is not an object or state of affairs in the world, but the effect it has on the person or people being spoken to.

Describing and influencing

In How to Do Things with Words (1955), J.L. Austin challenged the traditional view that the primary function of language is to describe. At the time, this view was held by many positivists, who advocated Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning, according to which words are effectively pictures of the world. By then, Wittgenstein had disowned his earlier theory, and had argued instead that language has countless functions, such as to persuade, to entertain, and to encourage. Austin agreed with the later Wittgenstein, but unlike Wittgenstein he thought that the functions of language are finite and could be classified.

Austin made a preliminary distinction between what he called “constative” and “performative” sentences. He defined constative sentences as descriptions of states of affairs, and performative sentences as words that are uttered to achieve a certain goal. The former, being descriptions, are either true or false, while the latter are either effective or ineffective in achieving their aims. However, Austin went on to claim that this distinction was inadequate, arguing that all constative sentences are performative in some sense. In other words, whenever we say anything, we are trying to influence the world in some way. For this reason, he redefined sentences as “speech acts”.

Doing things with words

To develop his theory further, Austin distinguished what he called the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts of speech. The locutionary act is the simple, physical act of uttering a sentence. However, the locutionary act is also an illocutionary act, which is the intended effect of speaking a sentence – such as to warn, to apologise, or to instruct. A locutionary act is therefore an act of saying something, whereas an illocutionary act is an act performed by saying something. Austin’s third category, the perlocutionary act, is the intended or unintended consequence of the illocutionary act on the person or people being spoken to. A warning, for example, can have the perlocutionary effect of being a hostile gesture, when no such effect was intended.

In Austin’s view, to understand a sentence is to understand all three performative aspects about it. He argued that words are effectively tools, whose meanings are the effects they have on the world, rather than pictures designed to represent it.

Acts of speech

According to Austin, speech is an active, performative exercise: when we speak, we want to elicit responses from others, and perhaps even influence their beliefs. The true meaning of a sentence is thus its intended social function, or what Austin called its “illocutionary force”. He contrasted this with the locutionary and perlocutionary aspects of sentences – that is, the physical act of speaking and the actual effects that sentences have on others.

Locutionary act

[A person sits on a park bench alone and says] “What a lovely day.”

A locutionary act is the physical act of uttering a sentence. However, it must be spoken in a social context to have meaning. To say “What a lovely day” to oneself is effectively to sigh with contentment.

Illocutionary force

[A person sits on a park bench with someone standing near and says] “What a lovely day.”

If someone says “What a lovely day” in a social context, they may be doing so to foster friendship. Their words have meaning because of their intended consequences.

Perlocutionary effect

[A person sits on a park bench with someone standing near that passes over a bunch of flowers who then says] “A lovely day indeed!”

For Austin, the meaning of a sentence is also the effect it has on other people. If someone is greeted by someone else, they may respond romantically, whether the effect was expected or not.

“Sentences are not as such either true or false.” – J.L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (1962)

✔ ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY

Austin belonged to a school of thought known as “ordinary language philosophy”. Ordinary language philosophers argue that the meaning of a word is the meaning it has in everyday language, and that philosophical problems arise when words are taken out of their natural contexts. For example, in ordinary language, we say that we “understand” something when it is clear to us what something means. However, it is less obvious what philosophers mean when they talk about understanding. The philosophical use of the word is abstract, and suggests that there is a “process” or “faculty” of understanding, which raises the question of what sort of process or faculty it is – for example, is it “mental” or “physical”? Neither of these questions arises from our ordinary use of the word.

Scientific Revolutions

American philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn challenged the dominant views of how the physical sciences work and transformed our understanding of the philosophical framework of scientific practice.

Paradigm shifts

Kuhn (1922–96) believed that science does not always progress in a linear and gradual way. Indeed, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), he argued that the most significant advances in science take the form of revolutions, which he called “paradigm shifts”. For Kuhn, a “paradigm” is a view of the world that a scientific theory presupposes. A paradigm shift is therefore a change in our view of the world, as opposed to an extension of our existing ideas.

According to Kuhn, “normal science” is what goes on between revolutions, when scientists have an agreed-upon view of the world. Newtonian physics, for example, was a paradigm that existed from the 17th century until the early 20th century, and because of it scientists had a framework of shared assumptions. One of those assumptions was that time is absolute, or it passes at the same rate wherever one is in the universe. In 1905, however, Albert Einstein showed that time is in fact relative, or passes at different rates depending on one’s perspective. This idea completely undermined Newtonian physics, and forced scientists to adopt a new, Einsteinian, paradigm.

Truth and progress

However, Kuhn argued that although Newton may have been wrong about the nature of time, the difference between Newton and Einstein is not that Einstein’s theory is “truer” than Newton’s. Indeed, one day Einstein’s ideas may be replaced. Instead, Kuhn claimed that science, in any age, enables us to do certain things, and that it is the things that we can do today (build computers, make vaccines, and so on) that make our science seem “true”.

For Kuhn, paradigm shifts are not stages in our progress towards truth – they are more like milestones in our evolution, or in our ability to adapt to the world. Scientific truth is thus a matter of consensus, and so is always subject to change, both between different cultures and at different times.

✔ NEED TO KNOW

. A paradigm shift occurs when a paradigm is thrown into crisis – when scientific research encounters too many anomalies.

. The process of building a new paradigm is what Kuhn called “revolutionary science”.

. The scientific community returns to its regular problem-solving activities once a general consensus over the new paradigm is reached. Normal science is resumed until new anomalies are encountered.

Avenues of knowledge

For Kuhn, while science has progressed along one particular route, there are many other routes it could have taken. A “true” route is one that solves the most important problems of the day.

Aristotle in crisis – Aristotelian physics was a paradigm until the 17th century; then scientists showed that it failed to account for gravity.

Newton’s world – In the 17th century Aristotle ideas were replaced by Newtonian physics.

Einstein’s world – In the 20th century, Newtonian physics was replaced by Einstein’s theories of relativity. However, the day will come when Einstein, too, is replaced.

Points of View

A number of philosophers have argued that it is impossible to think objectively, or without being influenced by one’s viewpoint. However, Thomas Nagel (1937–) claims that objectivity is possible within limits.

Points of view and objectivity

The idea of objective thinking suggests that there is a way of looking at the world that is not influenced by our particular, subjective viewpoints, which are shaped by our cultural and biological conditioning. To look at ourselves objectively is to see ourselves “from the outside” and to understand which of our beliefs are subjective and which are true regardless of who we are. Over a series of books and articles, Thomas Nagal discusses the extent to which this is possible.

For Nagel, the physical sciences are models of objectivity: they provide us with knowledge about the world and give us ways of testing that knowledge. In describing human beings, science tells us that we are creatures that have particular kinds of bodies, and that these give us our human point of view.

However, Nagel argues that there is only so much that science can reveal. For example, science can tell us all sorts of things about bats, such as what they eat and how they communicate, but not what it is like to be a bat. In other words, it can tell us what bats are like from our perspective (from the outside), but not what they are like from their perspective (from the inside). Nagel’s point is that science shows that there are numerous creatures in the world whose experiences, or points of view, are wholly unlike our own. All we can do is speculate about the nature of their experience, in the same way that someone who is blind can only speculate about the experience of sight.

For Nagel, knowledge is “a set of concentric spheres, progressively revealed as we detach gradually from the contingencies of the self”. By thinking objectively, we leave our particular perspectives behind, but our objectivity is limited: it gives us an outside view of a world that is filled with other perspectives, each of which has its own unique sense of its own existence.

The view from nowhere

According to Nagal, thinking objectively means thinking outside the boundaries of our subjective perspectives. The further we leave these perspectives behind the more objective are thinking becomes. The end goal of this process is to reach a vantage point that least depends on our biological and cultural perspectives – a view that Nagal calls “the view from nowhere”. The physical sciences, for example, operate in this “nowhere”: they describe things that are true for everyone, and not just for the scientists themselves. In Points of View (1997), the philosopher A.W. Moore calls the representations that are produced from no point of view “absolute representations”, for they describe the world with “complete detachment”.

“What is wanted is some way of making the most objective standpoint the basis of action.” – Thomas Nagal, The View From Nowhere (1986)

✔ THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In 1974, Nagal published a paper titled What is it like to be a bat? In it he argued that if something is conscious then there is something that it is like to be that thing: in other words, that to be conscious is to have a perspective. His argument relies on the idea that to be conscious is always to be conscious of something, and that the character of what we perceive depends on our senses. For these reasons, creatures with different senses perceive the world in different ways, and so being a bat is very different from being a shark or a dog. Nagel’s argument is a criticism of the materialists’ claim that consciousness can be fully explained by describing a creature’s brain.

Differing views

Nagal argues that no matter how much we study a bat, we can never know what it is like to be a bat. Likewise, a bat could never understand what it is like to be a human. However, if bats understood science, they could reach their own “views from nowhere”. They could formulate scientific theories, and still be aware of the limits of objectivity.

Feminist Epistemology

In studying the theory of knowledge (epistemology) from a feminist perspective, feminist epistemologists seek to identify and challenge harmful gender biases that prevail in many areas of knowledge.

A feminist view of knowledge

Feminist philosophers of epistemology and science have identified gender biases at the core of theoretical knowledge in disciplines such as physics, medicine, and law. They argue that women continue to be marginalised in most areas of knowledge as a result of the fact that dominant models of knowledge and the methods used to acquire knowledge both conceal and reinforce sexist biases. Stereotypically “feminine” modes of knowing (for example, practical forms of knowledge, such as how to look after children or the elderly) are underestimated and devalued.

As a consequence, women often lack self-confidence and authority in their chosen discipline, and may be assumed to be less capable scientists, researchers, or academics than their male counterparts. Feminist philosophers argue that cognitive and scientific practices need to be assessed and reformed in order to ensure that women are fairly treated in these traditionally “masculine” fields.

Questioning gender biases

This feminist view of epistemology does not necessarily imply that all knowledge is determined by gender. Feminists claim, however, that types of knowledge that are important to women’s interests are gendered. In doing so, they are not claiming that objectivity is not possible or desirable, but are raising questions about objectivity, such as whether it is possible or necessary to overcome specific gendered perspectives to achieve objectivity. They also question whether an unbiased view is always desirable, and asks what makes a certain perspective or situation a privileged one, and in what sense. They also consider whether or not men can put themselves in women’s shoes, and women in men’s, in order to gain a new and valuable perspective.

✔ STANDPOINT THEORY

Along with feminist empiricism and postmodern approaches, standpoint theory is one of several distinctive feminist approaches to knowledge. Standpoint theorists, including Sandra Harding (1935–), argue that the social position of women represents a standpoint (point of view) of a disadvantaged or oppressed group. This standpoint allows women to see the shortcomings of the male-dominated practices and institutions that oppress them.

Women’s standpoint is privileged because they have direct knowledge of what it means to be oppressed, and so are capable of a more insightful critical reflection. The oppressors – groups of powerful men – tend to ignore harmful assumptions and the consequences of their actions.

The aim of standpoint theory is to achieve a collective understanding among women as a social group, and to reveal these shortcomings and harmful assumptions. On this basis feminists can act politically to fight against the representation of women as objects of men’s desires and subordination, and to promote women as capable of holding all forms of knowledge, and as people whose needs and interests should be properly considered in every area of knowledge.

Different perspectives

Feminists argue that women face greater adversity than men in our male-dominated society, which gives them a different understanding of a situation. A man may think he can assess a situation objectively, but his perspective is skewed by patriarchal practices and harmful assumptions.

View from above: ‘What a wonderful, clear view I have from the top of the mountain! Here I am, master of the objective view! I see everything clearly.’

Men only: Many areas of theoretical knowledge have been created by men for men’s purposes. As a result, they may contain many unquestioned biases.

Feminist epistemology: The adversity faced by women reveals that the tools and workings of traditional knowledge need critical examination because they often produce limited and gender-biased knowledge.

Oppressed standpoint: I must find new ways to get to the top of the mountain, but I’ll keep going in order to achieve objectivity and gain knowledge that is free of gender bias.

This concludes the narrative for the page ‘Analytic Philosophy’. Amendments to the above entries may be made in the future.