A lot of people here seem to dislike the analytic tradition of philosophy. Why is this the case?
It seems to me that contemporary analytic work is by far the most readable and comprehensible, and covers the whole range of traditional philosophy. A likely explanation is that most people probably don't read the major changes that have happened since the 60s or so - and they end up equating logical positivism with analytic philosophy as a whole. But it's apparent that anglophone departments are not doing philosophy in the way conceived by Russel or Moore, and their fairly dogmatic positions on the role and limits of philosophy have been largely abandoned.
For instance, metaphysics is a respectable discipline now, as well as various revivals of ancient ethics and re-assessment of medieval thinkers. I think it's safe to say that "analytic philosophy" conceived as a rigid logicism that only clarifies arguments and plays haindmaiden to science, is a useless and outdated conception.
A lot of people here seem to dislike the analytic tradition of philosophy. Why is this the case?
Its mundane, banal and reductive.
The aim of analytic philosophy is not to expand the possibilities of thought, it's simply descriptive explicating the world as it exists in common understanding.
It's mostly women and liberals who shy away from it because they've been taught that rationality and logic are patriarchal and white supremacist capitalist concepts that oppress.
They'd rather think with their feels than with reason
How does continental endless regurgitation of Marxism and postmodernism expand thought any more than analytics?
at it's worst that's how it can be, but that doesn't characterize the whole philosophy. OP's pic is a great example that is none of those things.
Quine BTFOd Russel's dogmatic analytic superiority. Even Wittgenstein said all of R's non math is rubbish
Just ignore the numales on here, try don't want to engage with rationality and logic.
Secon post ended this thread
/thread
It really is a puzzling phenomenon considering contemporary analytic philosophy deals with many interesting problems and is positive about the role of philosophy in answering these questions and its relation to science. It seems most people are stuck with images of Russell shitting on Hegel and Carnap trying to blow up metaphysics and don't bother with anything past that, even though some of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century were analytics: Quine, Lewis, Armstrong, Davidson, Kripke, etc.
>he's an analytic
>he thinks he's worth something
lmao okay bud
are there any analytic philosophers who write about the failures or limits of analytic philosophy? And if there are any which philosophers are good at combining continental+analytic? I think I've heard Wittgenstein comes close to this but are there others?
What is there to combine? There is nothing in Analytic Philosophy that can not be found in Continental, its the opposite however which is not true
that doesn't answer my question at all
Yes it does, the very notion of combination is flawed. Analytic Philosophy is simply built on an inherent restriction, if you remove that restriction its no longer Analytic
>here is the bombshell: reflexivity permits us to see that the belief in rationality, induction/generalization/categorization, imagination, intellect, reason does not lead us to the good life.
>animals are the most rational beings, but they lack reflexivity since they fail to see that the faith in abstraction to reach knowledge/truth/objectivity/reality/universality is sterile since it brings only conventions which are, by definition, always fluctuating through, at least, time and space... rationality brings is a deception and a disappointment.
>the point of reflexivity is to notice the failure of rationalism, to embrace PURE empiricism, that is to say, to stop fantasizing about a collective reality, but rather to stick to personal phenomena in analyzing them.
the point of reflexivity is to make us wonder what do we want.
>Do you want to create norms, conventions in order to claim that you create norms and that these norms are truths that you try to impose on others, until some people will come to you and claim that their conventions are the truths and yours are lies ?
Analytic philosophy is shedding its positivist skin. That's why it's decent now.
Continental philosophy was interesting because it wasn't shackled by positivism. But Continental philosophy had little discipline or rigor, so has become so obscure as to be indistinguishable from mysticism.
>mundane, banal
As is mathematics and natural sciences. Those two are aesthetic qualities and what's aesthetic is none of analytic philosophy's concern. If you want writing that's aesthetic, go for literary criticism where you can say what you want, in the way you want, and where you don't have to justify for your views. Moreover, there are plenty of good prose stylists among analytic philosophers; not all philosophers write like Aristotle or Kant.
(OP)
What has happened during the 20th century, with all the resurgence of metaphysics via Kripke and others AND the flourishing of abstract mathematics and rigour, I think, is the realisation that most of what we know, even in the sciences, is that it has a metaphysical basis and that everything has it and that there is no escape from it: even if you hold the view that is somehow dismissive of metaphysics, you're simply introducing yet another metaphysics and unwittingly so; and you are a confused man (= ignorant of what metaphysics is, which is typical of most scientismos) if you think otherwise. The physicist integrates, but only with the underlying assumption that a bunch of controversial things exist along with his integrating: numbers, functions, sets, etc. He might of course be ignorant that such things may or could be controversial, but that is what is really happening. And the physicist does not have to justify the existence of these things either -- that's not what physics is about. It's more instrumental and you'd commit an error in blaming the physicist for not having a background theory that would explain numbers, too, because such inquiries no longer fall under physics, but metaphysics.
>A lot of people here seem to dislike the analytic tradition of philosophy. Why is this the case?
Contemporary analytic philosophy is inaccessible to the outsider. It's highly specialised and you'd be nuts to think that there are many who have their masters degree from a top10 school dwelling here on Veeky Forums.
>A likely explanation is that most people probably don't read the major changes that have happened since the 60s
This is *the* explanation. I wouldn't even go as far as 60s. Not even Moore's or Russell's work is discussed here (apart from the sporadic scorn directed towards Russell's atheism). Moore's Principia? Nope. Russell's On Denoting? Not a chance.
This is simply not the board to talk intelligently about analytic philosophy.
>For instance, metaphysics is a respectable discipline now
It's certainly very popular and done unashamedly these days, but as for its value and whether or not it is respected is a controversial issue. See: leiterreports.typepad.com
If Analytic Philosophy has been emancipated from Russellian positivism then what actually is the dividing factor between what you call contemporary Analytic and Continental traditions other than geography?
This is sophistry.
>here is the bombshell: reflexivity permits us to see that the belief in rationality, induction/generalization/categorization, imagination, intellect, reason does not lead us to the good life.
The intellect is the ONLY thing that can lead us to the good life, because it is the intellect which distinguishes between good and evil in the first place. At least the ancient sophists were consistent: if you do away with the intellect, you do away with good and evil, which means the notion of the "good life". It is the intellect which says that a man of peace is good and a murderer evil.
Don't think you can escape the intellect. You can't escape the intellect into a mythical, pre-intellectual golden age where men just do what they feel like and it's all good. The intellect does not obscure reality, it reveals it. The golden age was not when men was without thought, but when our thoughts were not contaminated by unruly passion, when our intellect was clearer. Trying to escape the intellect and its abstractions is to deform your very nature, because you are intellectual by nature. Happiness is not in the extinguishing of the intellect and being drunk submerged in the many and shifting perceptions of the senses, but in the intellectual contemplation of the one and unchanging reality which subsists beneath the many objects of sense perception.
>good and evil
dropped
style and subject
Care to elaborate?
>Russellian positivism
You can't put Russell in a box like that because over his lifetime he had a wide variety of different philosophical views across many branches of Philosophy. He wasn't even a member of the Vienna Circle. In temperament re philosophical issues he was similar to the late Hilary Putnam, I think.
>what actually is the dividing factor
Formal tools and hence methodology.
No
Don't be triggered by the words good and evil, poor postmodernist disciple.
Good just means that which the will desires, and evil that which is detests. The distinction between real goods and merely apparent goods is based on there being a supreme good (happiness) towards which some goods tend (real goods), and other goods only apparently tend (apparent goods), e.g. it mere appear that injecting yourself within heroin will make you happy, but this is only an apparent good and not a real good, because happiness is not a fleeting moment of bliss.
>the will
Can i ask a serious question
Why are most analytic philosophers white males
while Continental seems to be more diverse, women PoC? etc.?
This.
Numale cucks can't into logic.
This is also where the occasional outburst of STEM hate on Veeky Forums comes from.
but wasn't Hegel's logic much more advance and comprehensive than any Analytical Philosopher's logic system
Mathematicians and computer scientists and theoretical physicists are also mostly white males. It probably has to do with how creative, difficult and rigorous it is. Men like challenges, especially if solving a problem means that you do so in an absolute way (no room for uncertainty, a theorem is true in all possible worlds, etc.).
but why arn't Black Males in analytical philosophy?
Though Hegel did react to much of Aristotelian Logic--a Logic which was at the time the dominant Logic--Hegel lived in an era where nobody knew how to go beyond it and his objections and proposals were all informal in nature. So judging from the standards of analytic philosophy those were just ideas. I'm aware that there are some category theorists that are riding Hegel's dick in matters such as these but I suspect that most of them haven't read a gram of analytic philosophy.
>everyone who doesn't think the same way I do simply hasn't read the stuff I did
Easy pseud filter
As a continental philosopher myself, I can assure you that many of my fellow colleagues don't really know alot about analytical philosophy and are generally ignorant on it
thats why i been reading alot more stuff from Quine, Kripke etc.
>As a (...) philosopher myself
Embarrassing
What are you?
presuppositions (especially of rationalism and other sense-experience) and a disdain for anything beyond 'common sense'.
Why is 'discipline' or 'rigor' or 'mysticism' a bad thing.
Except there is no challenge in defining a system that makes all that fall under it a certain way while rejecting all that stray.
All Splangs are Clangs because I define all Splangs to be Clangs, any Splangs that are not Clangs do not exist because I can't explain that. There also isn't a God because I can't explain that, it's 2016 after all. Metaphysics is wrong for [Insert Humean fallacies here]
What analytic philosophy have you actually read?
this sums it up nicely. 99% of this board hasn't bothered to take the time to understand what analytic philosophy was and is, and as such allow their preconceived notions of spooky "positivists" to inform their understanding of an entire tradition and its history
Whitehead's Process and Reality is a complete system of metaphysics in the tradition of the great synthesisers, and it falls firmly under analytic philosophy. Most stereotypes about the "school" are easily refuted by examples. An interesting development in recent years is a return to aristotelian metaphysics by a number of thinkers. Positivism is out of fashion desu.
>All Splangs are Clangs because I define all Splangs to be Clangs, any Splangs that are not Clangs do not exist because I can't explain that.
If this insipid, kindergarten nonsense is your idea of what analytic philosophy concerns itself with then not only you're wholly ignorant but you're exactly the kind of person OP was talking about when it comes to misinterpreting the field.
>Except there is no challenge in defining a system that makes all that fall under it a certain way while rejecting all that stray.
What? Could you be more vague? Are you asserting that inventing a formal semantics for a well-defined formal language with a set of inference rules is a trivial enterprise?
Thanks for proving my point buds.
I'm an intellectual, I reserve the title philosopher for someone who has a recognized contribution to the field
A point nobody understood and a point you didn't care enough to spell out? Good going :^)
>nobody understood
Why is this relevant?
Most people prefer things that are viscerally appealing.
It's the small minority of people who prefer engaging with logic and "plain" or "scientific" concepts.
Fuck off stemfag. Mathematics and logic aren't difficult, they just take single minded dedication, which is why a good deal of comp scientists, theoretical physicists and (to a lesser extent) logicians often have a tinge or more of autism about them.
A lot of people on this site also like it. There's a variety of people that come to Veeky Forums. More news at 11.
The divergence is silly. All philosophy is based on analysis, and logic played a key role in philosophy long before "analytic" philosophy became a thing. Thing is, the continentals shit all over those logic-focused guys centuries back.
youtube.com
Does anyone please have the pic where the analytical school is a kid playing with wooden trains?
scientiasalon.wordpress.com
This post was the first time I heard Putnam had passed. RIP sweet prince.
>mfw Kripke could be next
>mfw he's already in a wheelchair
"arid and cryptic" kek