Debate on Analytic Philosophy

I just ended a ferocious debate about analytic philosophy at Matt Yglesias (here and here ). Anyone interested in my actual views can read the piece below, or this piece about Rorty, or go to my archive here. What I've produced is pretty fragmentary, but as the years go on I will have a more developed view up.

It's possible that American philosophy departments are somewhat less narrow than I remember from 15-20 years ago, but I really doubt that someone with my philosophical interests would be well-advised to study philosophy in any but a very few American departments.

I have the feeling that some of the discussants were unaware that there were any non-analytic philosophers in the world, or that there was anybody in the world, except idiots, who failed to admire analytic philosophy. A few uncharacteristic and unphilosophical displays of temper and snark were experienced on these threads -- and that's a good thing. I'm waiting to see whether someone ends up declaring me to be a pathetic idiot, or perhaps a Stalinist Nazi. Since I'm a confessed lowlife living in a basement, I have nothing to lose.

Update:

1. One critic said that I was using a sociological rather than a philosophical definition of "analytic philosophy", which was supposedly destroyed by Quine. To me this is a bit Humpty-Dumptyish. Whatever you call what followed analytic philosophy ("post-analytic philosophy"?), to everyone but the post-analytic philosophers themselves it looks like analytic philosophy. This criticism is probably much the same as the idea that there is no such thing as analytic philosophy, since it is so diverse, and since there is really no other philosophy anyway.

2. Stephen Toulmin, on whom I rely, was alleged as a counterexample to my allegation that philosophy is disengaged. However, I've seen no evidence that Toulmin is a significant factor in Anglo-American philosophy or that he works in a philosophy context any more. As I said originally, even though Toulmin's degree was in philosophy, it's my understanding that his work was ill-received by professional philosophers, that few of his co-authors and collaborators have been from philosophy departments, and that during the last twenty years or so he's spent more time teaching outside philosophy than in it.

3. I went to the Portland State University library and checked the first seven (alphabetically) and last five English-language philosophy journals . Of them, four were dedicated to classical and ancient philosophy (Apeiron, Ancient Philosophy, Phronesis, Review of Metaphysics), five were devoted to the analytic philosophy I am criticizing (Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Dialectica , Southern Journal of Philosophy, Ratio), two were at least half analytic (Dialogue, American Philosophical Quarterly) and one actually looked rather interesting to me (Journal of Philosophical Research). This is just the library of a single school, but to the extent that I was objecting to the neglect of classical and ancient philosophy, my criticism does not hold, but the relative absence of engaged and critical contemporary philosophy is still striking.

4. In this this ranking of contemporary and recent philosophy, nothing from practical philosophy (Toulmin, Perelman), process philosophy, or pragmatism after Peirce is even mentioned, and very little from Continental philosophy after about 1900. This analysis of the prestige of philosophy departments seems to show a similiar picture, and the fact that Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language are most important seems to indicate that analytic philosophy is definitely in the driver's seat. (The second link, however, again disconfirms my thesis that classical and ancient philosophy are neglected. It may still be true, though, that in some schools it is possible to get a philosophy PhD without any knowledge of classical and ancient philosophy.)

At the second link, the consensus in ranking, which seems to have been presented as evidence that philosophy is really professional and objective, indicates to me that there is not much diversity of thought or significant debate in the world of professional philosophy, and that the hegemony of analytic philosophy is virtually complete.

5. The professionalization and interest in prestige ranking showed here are not destructive of my intution that philosophy today is a closed corporation and bureaucratic biz maintaining itself primarily by its control of hiring.

Me on Rorty and philosophy

Me on analytic philosophy and ethics

Me on relativism

My philosophy archive

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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

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