THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT IN THE ANALYTIC CONVERSATION

THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT IN THE ANALYTIC CONVERSATION

Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture VOLUME 4 Series Editor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and Philosophy Department, Rice University, Houston, Texas Associate Editor Kevin William Wildes, S.J., Philosophy Department and Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC Editorial Board Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University, Durham, N.C. Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Mary C. Rawlinson, State University of New York at Stony Brook Stuart F. Spieker, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences, Boston, Massachusetts Marx W. Wartofsky, Baruch College, City University of New York The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation by NICHOLAS CAPALDI University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklaho1lllJ, U.S.A. SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.Y.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-5019-9 ISBN 978-94-017-3300-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3300-7 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

for Nicholas Rescher

Acknowledgments It is not possible to thank all of the individuals and authors who have influenced the writing of this book. My debts in many cases are obvious. A number of individuals deserve special mention: My friend Charles Sherover, my colleague and friend Richard McDonough, and my research assistant Steven Chesser all read the entire manuscript. John Kekes read and commented on an earlier draft. My colleagues Paul Rahe and Jacob Howland read and commented on Chapter Eleven. Special thanks are due to my colleagues in the Philosophy Department at the National University of Singapore who patiently endured my early lectures on this topic during the 1985-86 academic year. Despite my criticism of his position, Rom Harre was a ray of hope who during my term at Oxford helped me to transcend positivism. Hilail Gildin introduced me to the writings of Leo Strauss and made me recognize at an early date that true philosophy and political philosophy could be kept alive outside of the academic mainstream. A large part of the time needed to produce Chapter Ten was made possible by a grant from the Earhart Foundation. Insofar as I have grown philosophically, this has largely been made possible by my association with and participation in the intellectual life of Liberty Fund. Those most responsible for this privilege and for my development include Charles King, George B. Martin, H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., Emilio Pacheco, John Gray, Stuart Warner, Timothy Fuller, Stephen Erickson, Douglas Den Uyl, Tibor Machan, Douglas Rasmussen, and Donald Livingston. My long time association with the Pluralist movement brought me into contact with a number of individuals who made me realize the importance of our responsibility not only to the discipline of philosophy but to the profession of philosophy. These include the late William Barrett, John Loughney, John Smith, John Lachs, Robert Neville, Don Ihde, Sandra Rosenthal, Jude Dougherty, David Weissman, and Robert Scharff. Special acknowledgment should be made of Bruce Wilshire not only for his leadership in the Pluralist movement but for his contribution to understanding the crisis created in the university by professionalization. Despite all of this help, I must accept full responsibility for this volume. Finally, in dedicating this volume to Nicholas Rescher I wish to acknowledge the very special role he has played in the evolution of the analytic conversation, his enormous contribution to philosophy, and his continuing leadership in the profession. VII

TABLE OF CONTENTS dedication acknowledgments INTRODUCTION 1 Appendix: Outline of the Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation 11 Notes 16 CHAPTER ONE: THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT 17 The Enlightenment and the Enlightenment Project 17 Critics of the Enlightenment Project: Kant and Hegel 25 Russell and the Origins of Analytic Philosophy 27 Positivism: How The Enlightenment Project Became Part of The Analytic Conversation 30 Summary 33 Notes 34 CHAPTER TWO: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 41 The Importance of Science for Analytic Philosophy 41 The Structure of Science 44 Aristotelianism as a Philosophy of Science 44 The Analytic Restatement of the Modern Aristotelian Philosophy of Science 48 The 'Kantian Turn' 55 ix

Does Science Progress? (Popper, Quine, Kuhn, and Feyerabend) 56 Alternative to Scientism 65 Summary 68 Notes 69 CHAPTER THREE: ANAL YTIC PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 75 Philosophy as the Logic of Physical Science 75 What is Logic? 76 Logicism (Frege and Russell) 81 From Positivism to the New Analytic Philosophy (Elimination and Exploration) 89 Philosophy as the Social Science of Science 92 Explication as the Alternative 97 Explication vs. Exploration 100 Notes 104 CHAPTER FOUR: METAPHYSICS IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY 112 Introduction 112 What is Metaphysics? (Platonic, Aristotelian, and Copernican) 112 Modern Aristotelian Metaphysics 114 Hegelian Metaphysics (The Hegelian Argument) 116 Does Analytic Philosophy have a Metaphysics? 120 The Modern Aristotelian Metaphysics of Analytic Philosophy 123 Quine as Modern Aristotelian Metaphysician 124 Kripke as Modern Aristotelian Metaphysician 128 Self-Reference as the Achilles Heel of Analytic Metaphysics 132 The Hegelian Moment in Analytic Metaphysics (Nozick) 139 Summary 144 Notes 145 CHAPTER FIVE: ANALYTIC EPISTEMOLOGY 153 Introduction 153 Classical Epistemology (Platonism. Aristotelianism, and x

Skepticism) 153 Medieval Aristotelian Epistemology (Aquinas, Ockham, and Suarez) 159 Modern Epistemology (Spinoza and Locke) 160 Early Analytic Epistemology (Brentano, Moore, and Russell) 170 Wittgenstein's Tractatus 174 The Tractatus Solution 176 The Implications of the Tractatus Solution 177 Wittgenstein's Misgivings 181 Post -Wittgensteinian Analytic Epistemology (Quine and Kripke) 184 Notes 188 CHAPTER SIX: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE 194 The Epistemological Agenda 194 Why Language? 194 Analytic Linguistic Epistemology 195 Alternative Philosophical Views of Language 198 Philosophy of Language as Elimination (Quine) 201 Philosophy of Language as Explication (Wittgenstein' s Philosophical Investigations) 204 Philosophy of Languages as Exploration (Neo-Carnapians - Kripke) 208 Quine's Elimination vs. Kripke's Exploration 215 Summary of the Analytic Philosophy of Language 218 Wittgensteinian Explication vs. Analytic Philosophy of Language 219 Ordinary Language Philosophy 225 Notes 231 CHAPTER SEVEN: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 245 Introduction 245 The Enlightenment Project: Introspection and the Central Role of Cognition 246 Analytic Philosophical Psychology as Elimination XI

(Behaviorism and Identity Theory) 249 Epistemology, Language, and Mind 255 Analytic Philosophical Psychology as Exploration 257 Versions of Exploration (Functionalism, Fodor, and Dennett) 259 What's Wrong with Exploration? 263 The Hegelian Moment in Analytical Philosophical Psychology (Burge) 267 The Alternative of Explication 270 The Analytic Critique of Explication (Churchland) 276 Summary 279 Analytic Philosophical Psychology as Ideology 279 Notes 281 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT IN ANALYTIC SOCIAL SCIENCE 292 Introduction 292 Unified Science 292 Analytic Social Science as Elimination (Methodological Individualism) 293 Analytic Social Science as Exploration (Harre) 296 The Hegelian/Marxist Moment in Analytic Social Science 304 Explication as an Alternative to Analytic Social Science (Winch) 306 Analytic Philosophy as a Social Science 308 Summary 311 Notes 312 CHAPTER NINE: ANALYTIC ETHICS 317 The Enlightenment Project and Utilitarianism 317 Analytic Ethics (Moore) 318 The Enlightenment Project Enters Analytic Ethics (Russell) 318 Analytic Ethics as Elimination (Emotivism) 319 Analytic Ethics as Exploration - Meta-ethics (Hare) 320 The Return to Substantive Ethical Theorizing (Nozick and MacIntyre) 325 Analytic Ethics and the Loss of the Moral Agent 331 The Alternative of Explication 333 xii

Summary 338 Notes 339 CHAPTER TEN: ANALYTIC SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 349 The Politics of the Enlightenment Project 349 The Enlightenment Project in the Nineteenth Century (Liberalism, Socialism, and Marxism) 352 The Political Agenda of Analytic Philosophy 358 Analytic Political Philosophy as Elimination 362 The Meta-Politics of Exploration (Hart, Rawls, and Nozick) 364 The Inevitability of Marxism 371 The Communitarian Alternative (MacIntyre) 374 Exploration vs. Explication 377 Notes 384 CHAPTER ELEVEN: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 393 Introduction 393 The Positivist Elimination of the History of Philosophy 393 Why Positivist Elimination Still Needed a History of Philosophy 395 The History of Philosophy as Exploration 396 The Analytic Exploration of the History of Philosophy 397 The Alternative of Explication 408 Explication vs. Exploration 418 Analytic History of Philosophy and the History of Analytic Philosophy 423 Summary 428 Notes 430 CHAPTER TWELVE: BEYOND THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT 443 Metaphysics Epistemology 443 451 XIII

Axiology Analytic Philosophy and "Our" Culture Notes WORKS CITED INDEX 456 456 461 470 510 xiv