Re: Analytic Philosophy and Intuition

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

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OK! Quite a lot of disparate issues raised in that e-mail - I'll try and
restrict my attention as much as I can.

1. Accusations of linguistic relativism 
2. Causation
3. Psychoanalysis of intuition
4. AP

===

1. 

I want to concentrate mainly on this point. Linguistic relativism, as I
understand it, is the thesis that 
a) different languages can differ from each other in relevant ways and 
b) these differences affect the way we think and perceive the world. 
If this thesis is true then it would lend support to your contention that
philosophical intuition supervenes on psycho-cultural matters. However, after
re-reading my e-mail I do not believe I'm am committed to any such claim. If
anything I am committed to the converse of linguistic relativism, that is, the
structure of the world affects the way we talk (for a stronger position replace
'affects' with 'determines'). But I don't think I even go this far, all I am
claiming is that when answering a question such as 'what is knowledge?' we must
pay attention to the meaning of the word 'knowledge'. If I were to go off on one
about chickens I have misused the term 'knowledge'. 

A good philosophical theory should leave all the true sentences true.
Unfortunately we don't always know which sentences are true. For instance we
don't have a clear grasp of the truth of a) 'knowledge is justified true belief'
or b) 'past entities do not exist' but we do have a clear grasp of which
ordinary sentences in English are true. For example we do have a clear grasp of
sentences like c) 'Smith does not know that the man who is going to get a job
has ten coins in his pocket' (Gettier) and d) 'There were 3 kings named Charles'
(Lewis). Since a) entails ¬c) and b) entails ¬d) and we know the truth of c) and
d) we can deduce the deduce the falsity of a) and b). Of course we must be sure
the entailments are valid, and secondly must be sure that c) and d) are true
(but who would deny them?).

Another point on which I think you misunderstood me: I do not believe truth is
reducible to common use. Not even the ordinary language philosophers believed
this (in fact, as I interprate Wittgensteins account of truth, it was completely
independent of meaning - this is quite a contrast to the rest of 20th century
philosophy of language). Whenever I have appealed to the ordinary use of terms
such as 'causation' I am doing so as this is the best way of getting at 'the
meaning' of the word. However OLP constantly reminded us that language is
constantly changing and evolving, and concluded language and meaning etc are an
activity and that this completely undermines formal semantics. This is a
terrible mistake, the idea of objective meanings is even *presupposed* in their
description of language. What does it mean to say language is constantly
changing? The words change their meanings - so it is use that determines which
meanings the words have, but the meanings themselves are perfectly objective. As
Quine once scathingly put it:

"Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings
and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels."

Although I don't care for Quine's rhetoric, this is the essential, albeit overly
simplified idea behind most of the philosophy of language today.


2.
Sorry for my example about causation - I was trying to think of a really bad
analysis of causation which I could easily provide a counter-example for.
Unfortunately it was so bad it didn't even resemble an analysis of causation,
what I really wanted was the Humean definition of cause which is (marginally)
more plausible but falls to the same objection. 

Let me just emphasize that I did not claim that the fact that A caused B depends
on our language (this might be where you got the linguistic relativism?). It
depends on A and on B and on whether the causal relation holds between them.
However as speakers we can distinguish true from false sentences, so if a theory
of causation tells us that fission does not cause high amounts of energy to be
released we know the theory is wrong.


3.
"But this does not mean that intuition is taken as a priori intransient or
unimpeachable, but rather that it ought to be very carefully studied, and this
can only be done by psychoanalysis, psychology, hermeneutic interpretation."

For the purposes of this discussion intuition can be taken to mean the
conviction that everyday sentences that we take to be true, really are true. I
do not wish to say this is always the case. I do not want to claim that we can
never learn anything new from philosophy. Indeed this has lead some people to
accept, for example, the JTB analysis of knowledge and claim that our intuitions
only take us so far and that philosophy has actually taught us something. 

But anyway, my point is, that *this* kind of intuition is already available to
us. Any study of it would either rely on principles less basic. I find it hard
to see how they wouldn't presuppose the linguistic intuitions about everyday
sentences and hence beg the question (how far can you get without appealing to
them!?). Its impossible to start from high powered (and dubious) theories like
psychoanalysis and draw any radical conclusions about the most basic of our
intuitions. Either way, why would you want such an analysis, there always has to
be a starting point.

4.
Finally my qualm with AP is that it essentially *is* OLP. Many philosophical
theories contradict ordinary use, take Russell's theory of descriptions: if I
were to ask 'is the king of France bald?' Strawson claims that your reply is not
likely to be yes or no, it is more likely to be to inform me that the king of
France does not exist. But according to Russell's theory there should be nothing
wrong with saying 'no' since the sentence is literally false (I believe the
reluctance to say 'no' is that there is a de re and a de dicto reading of this
sentence, and by saying 'no' you might implicate the falsity of the true de
dicto reading .) 

Heres a better example, propositional logic tells us that A^B =||= B^A but does
that mean to tell us that propositional logic is false since in ordinary use
'fish and chips' is kosher but 'chips and fish' is not a common phrase? (Neither
fish nor chips are propositions, but there are plenty more similar examples).

Hope that's cleared some stuff up,

Andrew


> 
> 
>     I entirely agree (and never denied) that 'intuitions are relevant in at
least some (perhaps all) philosophical fields' - practicle ethics and politics
spring immediately to mind. Less obviously intuition is of course massively
'important' in psychoanalysis, which is usually the concern of continentalists.
But this does not mean that intuition is taken as a priori intransient or
unimpeachable, but rather that it ought to be very carefully studied, and this
can only be done by psychoanalysis, psychology, hermeneutic interpretation. This
need is particularly relevant if intuition is going to do the crucial work it is
often taken to do. This, i suppose, is a moderation of my last flipant comments
in that email, designed more to provke response - so now i might argue that this
could lead to a reconciliation/reliance/duality/copresence/whatever of
continental and analytic philosophy. It seems that perhaps neither account of
the world is insufficient.
>    
>   On another issue, the problem i would highlight with OLP is that it can have
some seriously relativistic consequences, and some anti-OLP philosophers pin
this down to the fact that OLP leaves certain assumtions/intuitions/practices
unquestioned. This leads me nicely to a problem i had with what Andrew Bacon
said. I am not so sure that modern analytic philosophy has fully succeeded in
forging a middle path between the Charybdis of formalism and the Scylla of OLP.
My general point is that appeal to unexamined premises starts us on a slippery
slope that it is very difficult to halt. Saying that this might mean that we
cannot do philosophy does not entail that we can do philosophy. As Andrew Bacon
says 
>    
>   '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.'
>    
>    An appeal to the intuition that we do seem to be able to progress and do
thing called philosophy (apart from being a bit empirically dubious because of
definitions of philosophy and progress etc) must have recourse to pragmatic
concerns. And pragmatism too is a slippery slope.
>   Andrew Bacon used the word 'supplement', and etymologically this word can
mean arbitrary addition, crucial completion, or complete replacement. And so in
a sense i might accept that OLP supplemented early analytics, but i guess not in
the sense that he meant. (i am not quite sure what Andrew Bacon was getting at
with his short account of causation, but it seemed like he was proposing a
pretty extreme linguistic relativism that is not clear elsewhere in his response
- i think i may have got this wrong so let me know. Furthermore, historically
concurrent events have often been mistakenly linked, as cause and effect have
often been confused. I dont think this is necessarily reducible to linguistic
drift, particularly with what i would say are undeniable scientific advances. My
main problem is that, and this applies to his epistemological example as well,
surely Andrew Bacon cannot accept that Truth is reducible to common usage
without becoming a pretty extreme relativist.)
>    
>   I do not see how it is possible to disagree with AP but that is because it
is tautological and does not say anything but suggest a definition of analysis.
Of course, if our analysis of language use contradicts language use the analysis
is incorrect, but the analysis of language, unless the argument is circular, is
not all there is to philosophy, particularly when the concept of language is
reduced, contra so much modern science, to verbal language.
> 
>   i have a feeling i havent really finished this rather sprawling email, but hey.
>    
>   cheers,
>   andy.
> 
> 
> 		
> ---------------------------------
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-- 
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900



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