Tradition Of Analytic Philosophy Research Articles

An Interpretation of the Deep Disagreement between Plato and Protagoras from the Perspective of Contemporary Meta-Ethics and Political Epistemology

Since the early 20th century, two new disciplines emerged in the tradition of analytic philosophy: meta-ethics and political epistemology. Nevertheless, debates on such questions go back to the ancient Greeks and, in particular, to the debates between Plato and Protagoras. This article elucidates the controversy between Plato and the influential sophist Protagoras from the perspective of contemporary meta-ethics and political epistemology. It argues that the main motivation of Plato’s philosophical endeavors is to overcome Protagoras’s skeptical claims that no moral facts and no moral knowledge applicable to political issues exist. The paper defends the thesis that there exists a deep disagreement between Protagoras and Plato on the existence of moral facts and moral knowledge. A deep disagreement is a disagreement that cannot be resolved through the use of reasons and arguments. Applying the foundationalist approach Robert J. Fogelin proposes in his seminal paper “The Logic of Deep Disagreements”, this article argues that the deep disagreement between Protagoras and Plato exists because their political thought is based on “underlying principles” that clash. While Plato’s political philosophy rests on his religious and theological convictions, the political thought of Protagoras is based on his skepticism, relativism, and agnosticism.

Conceptions of analysis in the analytic philosophical tradition

Analysis has been at the heart of philosophical method, though it has been understood and practiced in many different ways. This paper traces the historical conceptions of analysis in the analytic philosophical history, identified as: the Regressive Analysis, the Decompositional Analysis, and the Interpretative analysis. The key characteristic features and methodological approaches of each of these conceptions of analysis, as well as their relative era of historical significance, are explored in the paper. It concludes with the view that notwithstanding some objections against it, philosophical analysis is largely a fruitful method of philosophical inquiry, whose role in contributing to man’s better comprehension of reality remains highly significant and desired in our contemporary age. The expository and analytic methods of research are adopted in the paper.

Duševni identitet

The nature of personal identity is ultimately theological in nature. Through a survey of some of the recent philosophical evidence for the soul (in the analytic philosophical tradition), the following lays out reasons for why personal identity is accounted for by a soul because of the nature of phenomenal consciousness as essentially descriptive of persons. Yet, this conclusion is buttressed by theological reflection on personal origins and the end of life. Through a guided reflection on the origins of persons and the end of life (through the lens of dementia case studies), further suggested information about the person as a substance of consciousness reveals more than what is uncovered through philosophical or scientific analysis alone. In this way, and building on Priest’s recents work, the following is a sketch of personal identity as ensouled identity that moves beyond what Priest calls the ‘conditioned’ mode to the ‘unconditioned’ mode of theology.

Epistemic injustice and colonisation

As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the continuing coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression.

Norberto Bobbio’s political philosophy, between theory and ideology

ABSTRACT The article explores Norberto Bobbio’s thought regarding the complex relationship between theory and ideology, and the possible mutual influences between them. The essay first clarifies what Bobbio means by ‘theory’ and what connection he establishes between theory and political philosophy. The first section reconstructs Bobbio’s distinction between four ways of conceiving political philosophy, and his preference for the formal value-free approach of what he defines as a ‘general theory of politics’. The second section focuses on whether a general theory of politics, seeking to clarify the basic concepts of political language and provide purely descriptive definitions, is in fact possible. The third section deals with this same question starting from a debate between Bobbio, Passerin d’Entreves and Scarpelli sparked in 1954 by Felix Oppenheim’s book Dimensions of Freedom. Likewise, Bobbio’s last course in political philosophy on the topic of ‘revolution’ offers insights into his ‘empirical-analytical’ method, in which conceptual analysis is deeply related to the observation of reality and the study of history (fourth section). To conclude, the last paragraph returns to the complex relationship between theory and ideology in Bobbio’s thought, by highlighting elements of continuity and discontinuity, with the tradition of analytical philosophy.

Two Poles Worlds Apart

The article describes the background of Roman Ingarden's 1922 review of Leon Chwistek's book Wielość rzeczywistości (The Plurality of Realities), and the back-and-forth that followed. Despite the differences, the two shared some interesting similarities. Both authors had important ties to the intellectual happenings outside Poland and were not considerd mainstream at home. In the end, however, it is these connections that allowed them to gain recognition. Ingarden, who had been a student of Husserl, became the leading phenomenologist in the postwar Poland. For Chwistek, a painter, philosopher, and logician interested in Russell’s work, such connections meant that he won the competition for a professorship at the university in Lwów over Alfred Tarski. Until recently, Chwistek’s place in Polish logic remains unclear and Ingarden’s interactions with Polish logic and the Vienna Circle have not been investigated extensively. A deeper look at this intellectual fracas between Ingarden and Chwistek helps one in the study of the complicated mesh of alliances within the Lwów-Warsaw School. The article also identifies the origins of the split between phenomenology and the analytic philosophical tradition in Poland. The article is also accompanied by the translations of the reviews.

The Two Greatest Ideas: How Our Grasp of the Universe and Our Minds Changed Everything by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

Reviewed by: The Two Greatest Ideas: How Our Grasp of the Universe and Our Minds Changed Everything by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski Adina L. Roskies ZAGZEBSKI, Linda Trinkaus. The Two Greatest Ideas: How Our Grasp of the Universe and Our Minds Changed Everything. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2021. 280 pp. Cloth, $19.95 In The Two Greatest Ideas Linda Zagzebski takes the reader on an idiosyncratic yet illuminating jaunt through intellectual history, charting the ascendency, implications, and challenges of two major themes in Western thought. The first of these two ideas is that our minds can grasp the world: that there is an objective world and that humans can understand it. The second is arguably a corollary to the first: that the human mind can grasp itself. Much of the book focuses upon the way in which these two ideas are in tension. Zagzebski structures this story as a story about which of these two ideas has primacy. She argues that it was the realization that in grasping oneself as a mind impinged upon by external forces whose origins can only be inferred, that the second idea came to undermine our faith in the first. In the last century, she continues, even the second idea has come undone. If knowledge of the outer world cannot ground knowledge of the inner, and the inner cannot support the outer, knowledge itself becomes destabilized. Zagzebski traces many of our modern-day maladies to our failure to successfully integrate these two themes. Although this book is about philosophy, it is more a broad-brush sketch of intellectual history than a philosophy book. It does not hold itself to the standards of rigor characteristic of most philosophical texts. That rigor would presumably detract from its appeal to nonphilosophers, clearly its intended audience. To a philosopher, however, this free-wheeling style of exposition and argument can be irritating. For example, the nature of the two ideas remains somewhat ambiguous: Are the ideas about the possibility of understanding the world or of completely understanding it or of reaching ultimate truth or about the priority or foundations of knowledge? At various points, each of these is considered, but although each of these ideas is importantly distinct, these distinctions are not [End Page 613] clearly identified in the text. Even more frustrating, nothing is said about the concept of grasping: What does it mean to grasp the world, our minds, or our selves? One worries that there are not just two ideas here, but many, and that their influence is far more diffuse than the author wants us to accept. On the other hand, one of the refreshing things about this book is that although it concerns most centrally themes and commitments of Western thought, Zagzebski frequently stops to compare these commitments to related commitments (or their absence) in non-Western philosophical traditions, to show that certain ideas are either universal, or alternatively, that they aren't. For example, when considering the difficulty the West has had in integrating the subjective and objective, or in explaining consciousness given commitments to naturalism or physicalism, she points out that in native American, Asian, and African philosophies, the physical world is permeated with mind or spirit: No such dichotomy is ever contemplated. These kinds of observations can be eye-opening, and without mention it might never occur to those of us so steeped in Western traditions that there are other possible ways to view the world. Additionally, Zagzebski draws her examples from both the analytic and Continental philosophical traditions, adopting an inclusive approach encompassing both traditions. Earlier I called the book idiosyncratic. I mean that characterization as descriptive but not pejorative. Certain thinkers or types of thinkers play an outsized role in her discussions: Zagzebski is heavily influenced by Christian philosophers from St. Augustine and Aquinas to Plantinga, and by the ancients. Kant and Descartes play predictably central roles as well, but many thinkers who have written on these topics more recently, especially from the analytic tradition, are noticeably absent from the discussion. Also idiosyncratic are her choices of illustrations from science, art, and culture. She pulls from sources as diverse as Pythagoras, Kepler, and modern string theory, and underscores structural...

Interaction of Analytic and Continental Philosophical Traditions
 in D.F. Wallace’s The Broom of the System

The article examines a philosophical basis of D.F. Wallace’s novel
 «The Broom of the System» demonstrating the way the abstract ideas determine the construction of the plot and the choice of characters. The writer himself pointed out to L. Wittgenstein and J. Derrida as primary intellectual influences that he experienced at the period. Comparing the philosophers’ ideas and corre-
 lating them with the meaningful literary details of the novel, the author of the article defines a set of problems and tendencies forming the core of the book. Wittgenstein’s philosophy in the novel is closely linked to the Anglo-American pragmatic approach to the notions of language and meaning, in which the
 signifier and the signified demonstrate a clear one-way type of relationship determined by the context. In general, Wallace values the precise and scientific worldview, typical for analytic philosophy, but at the same time he keeps criticiz-
 ing its simplistic and utilitarian character. The strictly logical approach to viewing the events is opposed in the novel
 to the possibility of their different interpretation in accordance with Derrida’s claim that discloses the initial and irreducible alterity of any phenomenon disregarding the context in which it appears. Wallace intentionally weaves traces of
 ambiguity into all crucial episodes of the novel, due to which the book planned to demonstrate the necessity of breaking all sorts of bounding systems turns to prove the practical impossibility of the desirable action.

The purposes of descriptive psychology

AbstractIn this paper, I discuss the different views of the founders of descriptive psychology in the 19th century about the meaning and purpose of this discipline and sketch a new plan for connecting descriptive psychology with the language‐critical tradition of analytic philosophy. I will show that the goals Hermann Lotze, Franz Brentano, and Wilhelm Dilthey set for descriptive psychology were too lofty for different reasons. The common problem they faced was how to reconcile the ideal of autonomous philosophical knowledge with the empirical relevance that descriptive psychology should have. Faced with this dilemma, I outline a new plan to conceive of descriptive psychology as a critical project aimed at overcoming the obstacles that language places in the way of our knowledge of mental phenomena.

Imagination, Suffering, and Perfection: A Kierkegaardian Reflection on Meaning in Life

Abstract Engaging the thought of the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard, I challenge a tendency within the analytic tradition of philosophy on the subject of meaning in life. Taking as a starting point Kierkegaard's insights about meaning in life, the striving needed to attain an imagined ideal self, and his paradoxical conception of the perfection available to human life, I claim that meaning in life is a function of an individual's striving for an ideal self. This continuous effort to achieve myself is marked by suffering, an indispensable part of Kierkegaard's project of identity formation. The imagined grasp of a possible ideal self is essential to this process but insufficient for it because the imagination can only ever glimpse a kind of static perfection, not the lived perfection that only results from willed actualization of an ideal self. The meaning of a human life, then, consists in the suffering that results from a struggle to actualize the ideal I aspire to become in the process of identity formation. I contrast this view with a tendency shared by many contemporary analytic philosophers of meaning in life, for whom meaning in life is constituted by achievement of valued goods, without much attention to one's relation to the process of achieving them. In that respect, I will focus on the position of Iddo Landau. After clearing a number of his misconceptions about Kierkegaard's philosophy, I claim that, for a life to be meaningful, valued goods in life must be complemented by a conscious enactment of the process of the formation of one's identity that includes striving to attain a kind of perfection. I conclude that Kierkegaard's paradoxical account of perfectionism makes him more of an ally to Landau than an opponent.

The Promise of Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and Business Ethics

Pragmatists believe that philosophical inquiry must engage closely with practice to be useful and that practice serves as a source of social norms. As a growing alternative to the analytic and continental philosophical traditions, pragmatism is well suited for research in business ethics, but its role remains underappreciated. This article focuses on Richard Rorty, a key figure in the pragmatist tradition. We read Rorty as a source of insight about the ethical and political nature of business practice in contemporary global markets, focusing specifically on his views about moral sentiments, agency, and democratic deliberation. Importantly for business ethicists, Rorty’s approach sets in stark relief our moral responsibility as useful, practical thinkers in addressing the societal challenges of our time. We use “modern slavery” as an empirical context to highlight the relevance of Rorty’s approach to business ethics.

What and how Markus Gabriel proves in his book “I am Not a Brain”

The paper is a discussion of the book by the German philosopher Marcus Gabriel “I am Not a Brain” in the context of the distinction between Analytic and Continental philosophical traditions. Gabriel denies the benefit of such a distinction. However, his book may be a good illustration of the opposite. The paper shows why this is so. The main thing is that when presenting the theoretical positions of certain philosophers, Gabriel is inclined to refer to non-philosophical explanations of their origins. This manner of presentation has nothing to do with the methods of analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophers evaluate philosophical concepts and arguments based on themselves. In addition to clarifying this issue, the paper examines the main ideas of Gabriel’s book and evaluates some of the ideas proposed by him related to the concepts of consciousness, the human spirit and the problem of free will. In particular, the paper discusses a concept that receives the name “neo-existentialism” from Gabriel. His solution to the problem of free will is also considered, which is one of the varieties of compatibilism, the position according to which free will can coexist with causal determinism, which means a state of affairs in which at any given time the world has only one really possible future. The connection of this decision with Gabriel’s more general metaphysical ideas, expressed in his book about the nonexistence of the world, is shown. Special attention is paid to the features of Gabriel’s criticism of alternative approaches to the interpretation of consciousness and free will. The analysis of Gabriel’s particular concepts confirms the general conclusion of this paper that his book is not related to the analytical philosophical tradition.

P. CHEYNE, A. HAMILTON, M. PADDISON (EDS.) PHILOSOPHY OF RHYTHM: AESTHETICS, MUSIC, POETICS. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019 ISBN 978-0-19-934778-0

The review provides an outline of the collective monograph The Philosophy of Rhythm: Aesthetics, Music, Poetics, edited by Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton and Max Paddison, published by Oxford University Press, 2019. Concept of rhythm is analysed from different perspectives—philosophical, musicological and psychological. It considers a multidisciplinary approach and also includes both analytic and continental philosophical traditions. Rhythm is viewed as a pulse that is going through various metric structures including particular pieces of music, paintings, examples of poetry and philosophy. Twenty eight authors from the entire world discuss rhythm and specify definitions of rhythm. They try to give answers on crucial questions uniting experienced rhythm in philosophy and arts, thus giving an important contribution to rhythm studies. The book is organised thematically and based on different aspects of rhythm manifestations. The main questions of the research are as follows: How is rhythm experienced? Does rhythm necessarily involve movement? Why rhythm is so deeply rooted in human? How can static configurations be rhythmic? How does a rhythmic structure change from a stable pattern to a flexible texture? All these questions concern two interwoven issues common for the volume in general: immanence of rhythm to arts and human experience of it.

Wittgensteins vergebliche Suche nach einer Methode der Metaphysik Betrachtungen anlässlich des einhundertjährigen Jubiläums der Erstveröffentlichung des Tractatus

As we celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the first publication of the Tractatus, I take a look back at this foundational work of the analytic philosophical tradition. In particular, I examine Wittgenstein’s conception of metaphysics in this work and explore the question of what Wittgenstein considers to be the correct method of metaphysics. As a careful analysis shows, the Tractatus suggests at least three completely different methods of metaphysics: arguing by transcendental argument, logical analysis of the propositions of our language, and some kind of immediate insight. None of them seems to work within the framework of the book: transcendental arguments are ruled out by the infamous proposition 6.54, according to which there are no meaningful philosophical arguments. Logical analysis is declared to be part of a mere application of logic that falls outside the scope of the Tractatus. And immediate insight looks like a dubious fallback position that cannot be made plausible and does not meet Wittgenstein’s own standards for justification. All in all, the method of metaphysics in the Tractatus remains unclear.

Manuel Sacristán y la imaginación analítica

Uno de los rasgos más característicos de la obra, dispersa y fragmentaria, de Manuel Sacristán es una recepción crítica de corrientes de pensamiento señeramente marxistas mediante un instrumental filosófico heredado de la tradición analítica. Se trata de una propuesta que anticipó en varias décadas el surgimiento del “marxismo analítico”, una intervención colectiva de gran impacto internacional en la que, sin embargo, Sacristán apenas intervino. Este artículo trata de reconstruir un diálogo posible entre algunos elementos centrales del marxismo analítico y las reflexiones epistemológicas y políticas de Manuel Sacristán.

On the History of the Divide between Analytic and Continental Philosophies: The Case of Epistemology in France

The article analyzes the conflict between the “analytic” and “continental” approaches in philosophy on the example of the development of historical epistemology, which can be considered as “French style” in the philosophy of science. The French tradition is especially interesting due to the specificity of the reception of analytic philosophy that took place in it, where analytic philosophy did not receive an institutional form. The phrase “analytic philosophy” was problematized in the French academy in the 1950s and indicates the existence of a number of differences between the two types of philosophizing, as well as the absence of any stable connection between the French and Anglo-Saxon philosophical communities. One of the main reasons of this divide is that the philosophers interested in logical positivism and seeking to acquaint the French philosophical public with its ideas have suddenly passed away. The author’s argumentation is based on the material of historical epistemology in France, which was traditionally associated with the philosophy of science much more than epistemology in other countries. The article considers two approaches to defining the difference between analytic and continental philosophy: theoretical approach (distinctions between these traditions that are based on the subject of research, methodological techniques, key ideas, style) and institutional (based on geographical division – a particular philosopher belongs to a country or an academy – or based on the choice of his predecessors by the philosopher himself). The author demonstrates the inconsistency of the theoretical approach to the definition of analytic and continental philosophical traditions.

The Turn to Logic and the Transformation of an Ancient Quarrel

The development of an analytic tradition in philosophy is bound up with a newly intensified interest in logic, and Frege’s development of a new form of logical notation — an early form of what is now called predicate logic — is one of the conditions that made that tradition possible. At the same time, the development of analytic philosophy is also tied to a turn away from what had until that time been a natural and often mutually beneficial exchange with poetry, drama, and fiction. It is easy to assume that the turn away from literature is a necessary consequence of the turn to logic. This essay argues that in fact there are good reasons to think that if we follow the turn to formal logic through, it instead pushes philosophy back into a transformed and perhaps deeper kind of conversation with literature. The terms that organize this renewed conversation are those of a shared preoccupation not with certain ideas or content but with the power of form. The upshot is that the turn to formal logic returns philosophy to a transformed version of the “ancient quarrel” with which it began.

‘THE AFTERMATH EXPERIENCED BEFORE’: AESCHYLEAN UNTIMELINESS AND IRIS MURDOCH'S DEFENCE OF ART

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch (1919–99). She has been celebrated as one of Britain's most important postwar writers with twenty-six prose fiction novels to her name. Murdoch was also an ancient philosopher who was primarily interested in issues of moral philosophy. Pinning down her place in the Anglo-American analytic tradition of philosophy, however, is not a straightforward task. On the one hand she cut a conventional figure, holding a tutorial fellowship at St Anne's College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1963. On the other hand, her philosophical writing increasingly departed from the coordinates of analytical philosophy. As Martha Nussbaum notes in her deeply ambivalent review of Murdoch'sThe Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists, Murdoch is ‘a novelist whose best work is deeply philosophical, a philosopher who has stressed…the special role that beauty can play in motivating us to know the good, …a Platonist believer in human perfectability, and an artist.’ Nussbaum points us towards understanding two key elements in Murdoch's thought: her commitment to Plato and the manner in which Murdoch's activity as philosopher and novelist should be considered as interdependent.

Pluralism and ineffability

In a tribute to the work of Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff characterizes a form of the analytic tradition in philosophy of religion, which neither he nor Plantinga endorses, as a brand ofKant-rationality. What such rationality aims to achieve is, above all, auniversalityof rational agreement, or rather ‘a foundation that is acceptable to all rational reflective human-beings’, something that could be acknowledged by ‘all cognitively competent adult human beings’ who had access to the same relevant information or facts.

Ação como base para uma estética da subjetividade lúdica

A relevância de reconhecer o senso de agência como sendo fundamental para a experiência da jogadora ao se engajar com o mundo do jogo já foi apresentada com frequência. Neste artigo, eu gostaria de examinar a ideia de que a ação constitui o eu próprio da jogadora, isto é, o senso de quem ela é em relação ao mundo do jogo. Para este fim, a observação concentra-se em jogos nos quais a jogadora se incorpora ao mundo do jogo na forma de uma única figura jogável, estabelecendo uma posição-subjetiva lúdica incorporada na qual ela aciona a subjetividade lúdica. O primeiro passo para fundamentar a análise dessa atualização da subjetividade lúdica foca na conceituação da relação entre ação e sujeito. A identificação de um esquema conceitual para atacar esta questão pavimentou o caminho para abordagens da ação por ambas as tradições da filosofia, analítica e continental. Ao seguir esse direcionamento, o artigo argumenta que a estrutura experimental do gameplay de jogos digitais se organiza em torno da interação entre a perspectiva interna do mundo do jogo – aquela da posição-subjetiva lúdica – e uma perspectiva externa, distanciada, permitindo que a atualização da subjetividade lúdica da jogadora torne-se visível e estruturando uma estética da subjetividade lúdica que é inseparável – e, de fato, consequente à tomada de ações que a jogadora exerce no mundo do jogo.