The Paradox of Analysis

Abstract

Many contemporary Western philosophers are primarily concerned with providing philosophical analyses. They refer to the objects of their analyses in various ways. Some analyze the meanings of words or sentences; some, concepts or propositions; others, properties or states of affairs; and still others, individuals or facts. Just as philosophers disagree as to what it is they are analyzing, so they also disagree as to what analysis consists in. However they refer to what it is they are analyzing and however they think of philosophical analysis, the representatives of one important tradition in analytic philosophy think of their task as a) significant and b) a priori. They view their task as one which requires considerable labor and which is often extremely difficult to complete. The philosopher who finally provides the correct analysis of knowledge, or causation, or goodness, or physical objects will take pride in answering a question that many have tried and failed to answer. But despite the obvious difficulty involved in providing adequate philosophical analyses, it has not been easy for the philosopher who sees his task as a priori to pinpoint the source of the difficulty. It seems not at all like the scientific problem of providing an analysis of molecules or atoms or electro-magnetic fields where at least part of the difficulty usually involves incomplete empirical evidence. The' office-bound philosopher is, one hopes, unencumbered by the need to soil his hands in the pursuit of empirical data to discover the truths with which he is concerned. The data he needs to find the correct philosophical analysis of, for example, causation is at his fingertips. Indeed, it is, so to speak, nearer it is in some important sense a prior. Though the view that the discovery of an adequate philosophical analysis is not always easy to come by is implicitly accepted by any philosopher who spends even part of his time engaged in the search for philosophical analyses, it has not always been remembered by such philosophers. One of the most famous philosophical arguments in the field of ethics is Moore's open question argument. Moore seemed to want to claim that you could attack any proposed analysis of goodness in terms