Analytic Philosophy and Intuition

[Andrew Bacon <andrew.bacon@lmh.ox.ac.uk>]

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In response to Andrew Stephenson: as I understand it Andy believes that the need
to appeal to intuition at some point undermines the use of analytic and formal
methods in philosophy (this is, I believe, what is being referred to by
"transworld identity, stipulative definition, rigid designators, contingent a
priori, necessary a posteriori etc [...]").

Needless to say I do not share these concerns (I don't quite see what the
problem is to be honest). As I see it, two of the most important influences on
analytic philosophy today are the early analytics (Frege, Russell, early
Wittgenstein, perhaps Carnap) and the ordinary language philosophers
(Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, Strawson). The greatest impact of these two
movements is perhaps the mistakes they made. The early analytics held natural
language in great disrespect, maintaining that it was too imprecise and that it
should be replaced with their favoured formal language for the purpose of
serious argument and science. The OLP movement corrected this, arguing that
these formal languages are at best approximations for ordinary language and that
they fail in important respects. They rightly claimed this was a problem of the
*formalism* not natural language. While these certainly are important points
they went to the other extreme, holding that the sole determinant of meaning is
use, and that philosophical problems can be resolved by merely analysing the way
in which these terms are ordinarily used (I don't want to get into why this
approach fails here).

Supplementing the early analytics framework with a healthy respect for natural
language we have all the ingredients for the analytic method we see everyday in
analytic philosophy. The two ingredients fuse very well together. I may use
formal or just careful argument to show a particular view leads to a certain
consequence and then argue the conclusion contradicts intuition (or is a
contradiction - although this is less likely to happen in philosophy than maths.
The term 'reduction ad absurdum' is the philosophical counterpart of 'proof by
contradiction' since we very rarely can show something is false outright).

For example, if I were to provide an analysis of causation in which, say, 

A causes B iff [A -> B] and throughout the world history if A' is an A-type
event and B' is a B-type event then [A' -> B'].

And it was pointed out that always, if an iron rod is glowing red it is hot and
that in a particular instance we have a red hot iron rod, we wouldn't say its
glowing red caused it to be hot. Clearly this is not causation, but to what may
we appeal other than our use of the word 'cause' to establish this conclusion. 

If you where to analyse knowledge as justified true belief and someone came up
with a Gettier counterexample, it is a counterexample purely because we have a
case of justified true belief which is *not* knowledge. What if I argued it was
knowledge? Suppose by the word 'knowledge' I actually just meant justified true
belief. Surely here you *would* be entitled to say I was mistaken, that I had
not understood the meaning of the word 'knowledge' or that I had not paid close
enough attention to the words standard usage.

Another important example is Quines principle of ontological commitment - "To be
is to be in the range of a bound variable". Surely to say 'there are prime
numbers greater than 100' just *means* that prime numbers greater than 100
*exist*, and hence entails that numbers exist. Whether their existence is
ontologically basic or is constructed out of other ontologically basic
categories is different matter.

Finally taking the presentism eternalism debate. I do not believe that natural
language favours presentism but that's my opinion. David Lewis has argued that
natural language favours eternalism, he claims that there where 5 Kings named
'Charles' entails that presentism is false (presentism states that everything
that exists is present, but the premise entails the existence of past entities)
presentist analyses of this sentence get the wrong truth conditions (we need 5
existential quantifiers but each one successively falls under the scope of an
extra P operator) *and* get very complicated very quickly much like Russell's
analysis of number terms (this isn't a very biting objection imo). This is a
deadly objection if it is valid. 

The kind of analysis that is *not* good is to argue that natural language
favours presentism by looking at tense morphemes and arguing they behave
grammatically like sentence operaters and not like quantifiers or something like
that (I'm not sure that's a good example but hey). We want the truth conditions
for these sentences, and the grammatical structure often misses the mark completely.



Anyway - I hope that answers the question. I tried to give some examples to show
how philosophical analysis is done using this method. In the end if you can't
trust your own words then there's very little you can say, you couldn't even
formulate the argument that this was the case.

Also in reply to the other e-mail, I'm not sure I like (AP) particularly. The
idea is to only apply common sense to cases where common sense applies. That is,
if "there where 5 Kings named 'Charles'" turns out false under a theory we have
reason to be concerned. If "time does not exist" turns out true under a theory
we cannot apply the same reasoning, common sense has very little to say about
the existence of time directly.

Andrew





> Andy, Firstly I think that the follow premise of analytic philosophy (at
> least I think it should be a premise or axiom of analytic philosophy!)
> should really be accepted by everyone (but perhaps you want to disagree):
> 
> AP: People happily use language in particular ways. If in analysing the use
> of language we contradict how we ordinarily use language then this analysis
> of language is incorrect.
> 
> For example, suppose that we were (as I recently have been!) investigation
> when composition occurs, i.e. when do we have a complex object (an object
> with proper parts). Ordinarily we accept that a book is an object, but we do
> not accept that the mereological sum of a book and a tree (call it a
> booktree) is an object. Any analysis of the word "object" that concludes
> that books are not objects and booktrees are is mistaken. Even if there is
> more to the meaning of a word to simply knowing under which situations it is
> used, appreciating when it is used and when it isn't is important to its
> meaning. Therefore we can appeal to our intuitions about what is and isn't
> an object to decide whether a theory of objecthood is correct. (Our
> intuitions about objecthood being namely that books are objects and
> booktrees are not). I suppose that you could say that this particular
> exercise is understanding what our (linguistic) intuitions are, and
> consequently appeal to intuitions is important!
> 
> However, philosophy is not just uncovering intuitions. How we use our
> language is just such a matter, and analysis of language had better
> recognise that, but judging whether the language we use correctly describes
> the way things are is a different matter. Let's take time, and let's just
> say that the issue is between eternalism and presentism. I personally think
> that our linguistic intuitions are in favour of presentism, but this doesn't
> prove presentism and it doesn't even come close. I think of myself as
> analytic but am (usually) happy to accept that there is more going on with
> time than just how we talk about it (but it depends what mood I'm in!) I
> think that someone in the middle of ordinary language philosophy might have
> a problem in saying what could be beyond language due to the following
> reason. Suppose the way we talk presupposes presentism. Now how are we
> supposed to make sense of the following sentence: "The correct answer to how
> time works is eternalist." The OLP philosopher will think that this is
> straightforwardly false: the word "time" is used in a way that presupposes
> presentism! Maybe something works in an eternalist fashion, but it's not
> whatever we call "time." There is nothing else to say. There might be more
> stuff happening that how our langauge works, but since we lack the tools to
> express extra-linguistic fact (all our tools of expression are linguistic)
> we cannot express (and perhaps some will want to claim therefore cannot
> comprehend) extra-linguisitic fact. Since extra-linguistic facts are not
> comprehendable, the expression "extra-linguistic fact" doesn't mean
> anything. And so trivially there are no extra-linguistic facts, (since
> according to OLP I don't even understand what I just said in denying such
> things as extra-linguistic facts). As Wittgenstein said: "The limits of my
> language mean the limits of my world." Since analysing language is all there
> is to philosophy, it follows that appeal to (linguistic) intuitions is
> legitimate in all fields of philosophical enquiry.
> 
> I hope I have got OLP right, if not I think what I said makes reasonable
> sense. I want to resist the argument I've just spelled out, since I do think
> that when I engage in speculative metaphysics I do actually mean something
> rather than just utter garbled and ill-formed sentences. However I am really
> impressed by this exposition of OLP (or what I think OLP is about!). I have
> my own thoughts about its problems, but perhaps you guys have some ideas. In
> any case do you see why intuitions are relevant in at least some (perhaps
> all) philosophical fields Andy?
> 
> Matthew
> 
> 
> On 12/03/06, andrew stephenson <winstonmarx@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> >  Hi there all you analytics, i am posting to voice a worry i have had for
> > some time, but that had slipped my mind until Andrew Bacon's email. I say
> > hello 'analytics' because i am looking at this problem from a
> > continentalists point of view, and they don't usually have it (for two
> > reasons that shall come out soon).
> >
> > Andrew mentioned two opposing arguments put forth by Plantinga and Lewis.
> > Now, it struck me immediately that both arguments had a similar premise: 'We
> > would normally accept the proposition', and 'something we would be hard
> > pressed to accept'. both of these have recall to what has been called common
> > sense or intuition, or indeed many other things. The Plantinga argument
> > begins with such a premise without which it could not function, the Lewis
> > argument ends with such a premise, without which it would not be a r!
> > eductio ad absurdum.
> >
> > My point is that it seems strange to talk about transworld identity,
> > stipulative definition, rigid designators, contingent a priori, necessary a
> > posteriori etc etc etc etc, and in the end simply decide on the basis of
> > intuition or common sense. This strange phenomena is particularly weird
> > given all the important and enlightening work done in the fields of the
> > social sciences, psychology, and continental philosophy etc regarding things
> > like social indoctrination, matrices of difference, the dogmatism and
> > intranscience of moral education etc etc blah blah blah.
> >
> > Continentalists dont have this problem to avoid, either because they dont
> > construct such clear (ha!) and concise step by step arguments, or because
> > they dont worry too much if the theory or argument fits in with our common
> > way of looking at things (indeed, it is often taken as a sign of a great and
> > innovative idea if it makes us think differently, even if it sounds very
> > odd).
> >
> > i'm not going to develope links this thought has with ordinary language
> > philosophy, or to various issues in the philosophy of scoence, such as the
> > interpretation of Quantum Mechanics or the strong sociology of science
> > program, or to the prevalent problem of the hermeneutic circle, but I do
> > hope (largely due to the lack of enthusiasm for some of my recent
> > posts) this email will provoke a few righteous outcries. I hope it is clear
> > that i am implicitly (now explicitly) questioning the usefulness or
> > self-awarefulness of modern analytic philosophy.
> >
> > cheers,
> > andy.
> >
> >
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-- 
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900



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