Extra-Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

In chapters five, six and nine we have discussed, it will be remembered, three major forms of semantic analysis. In the present chapter we pass to the second type of philosophical analysis we distinguished in chapter one: to what I have called “extra-linguistic analysis.” This type of analysis, it will perhaps be recalled, consists in the philosopher’s conceptual analysis of (I) certain actual objects, occurrences or states of affairs, and/or (2) certain empirical facts — hence true propositions — about actual objects, occurrences or states of affairs arrived at through scientific investigation. In both cases — and this is absolutely essential in our present conception of philosophical extra-linguistic analysis — the philosopher’s appeal to the nature of, or actual facts about, various existing things is, or must be, designed to help answer some philosophical question, or to throw light on some philosophical concept. In the latter case, the empirical facts which are utilized and interpreted may sometimes show the usefulness or desirability of reconstructing the concept in question, in view of the philosophical purpose or purposes it is intended to serve. In the light of our description of this method, it is seen that ‘empirical analysis’ would have been a better name for it than the one I have actually used, except for the following two reasons: First, that semantic analysis too is empirical in one sense — in being an analysis of actual languages or parts of actual languages; and second, that our present type of analysis, like semantic analysis, is conceptual in nature; as opposed to the kind of analysis which the chemist (say) practises in his laboratory.