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1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 7. Limitations of Analysis

[why analysis is trivial, limited or hopeless]

19 ideas
The desire to split everything into its parts is unpleasant and unphilosophical [Plato]
     Full Idea: To try to set apart everything from everything is not only especially jangling, but it is the mark of someone altogether unmusical and unphilosophic.
     From: Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 259e)
Trained minds never expect more precision than is possible [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is the mark of the trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of that subject permits.
     From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1094b18)
     A reaction: An excellent remark in the context of moral philosophy. There is a dream that moral principles might derive from pure reason, or consist of a single rule expressible in a few words, but daily life isn't like that, and morality is not likely to be.
Analysis falsifies, if when the parts are broken down they are not equivalent to their sum [Russell]
     Full Idea: It is said that analysis is falsification, that the complex is not equivalent to the sum of its constituents and is changed when analysed into these.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §439)
     A reaction: Not quite Moore's Paradox of Analysis, but close. Russell is articulating the view we now call 'holism' - that the whole is more than the sum of its parts - which I can never quite believe.
We already know what we want to know, and analysis gives us no new facts [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: In philosophy we know already all that we want to know; philosophical analysis does not give us any new facts.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B V.1)
This book says we should either say it clearly, or shut up [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref)
     A reaction: This also provides the last sentence of his book. I think this is an axiom of modern analytic philosophy. The dream is to clarify everything, and belief that this is possible puts logic centre-stage, as the most precise language available.
Critics say analysis can only show the parts, and not their distinctive configuration [Ayer]
     Full Idea: Critics say an analyst is obliged by his atomistic metaphysics to regard an object consisting of parts a, b, c and d in a distinctive configuration as being simply a+b+c+d, and thus giving an entirely false account of its nature.
     From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2)
     A reaction: Ayer refers the critics to gestatl psychology. Personally I prefer to talk about the ontology rather than the psychology. If we include (as Russell suggests) relations as part of the analysis, there seems to be no problem.
When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze]
     Full Idea: Not reflection, and objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: 'OK, OK, let's get on to something else'. Objections have never contributed anything.
     From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
     A reaction: I know it is heresy in analytic philosophy, but I love this! In analytic seminars you can barely complete your first sentence before someone interrupts. It's like road range - the philosophical mind state is always poised to attack, attack.
If you know what it is, investigation is pointless. If you don't, investigation is impossible [Armstrong]
     Full Idea: Paradox of Analysis:if we ask what sort of thing an X is, then either we know what an X is or we do not. If we know then there is no need to ask the question. If we do not know then there is no way to begin the investigation. It's pointless or impossible
     From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 01.2)
     A reaction: [G.E. Moore is the source of this, somewhere] Plato worried that to get to know something you must already know it. Solving this requires the concept of a 'benign' circularity.
Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a bad one [Rorty]
     Full Idea: There is nowadays little attempt to bring "analytic philosophy" to self-consciousness by explaining how to tell a successful from an unsuccessful analysis.
     From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 4.1)
Despite all the efforts of philosophers, nothing can ever be reduced to anything [Fodor]
     Full Idea: The general truth is that nothing ever reduces to anything, however hard philosophers may try.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6)
Paradox: why do you analyse if you know it, and how do you analyse if you don't? [Ruben]
     Full Idea: The alleged paradox of analysis asserts that if one knew what was involved in the concept, one would not need the analysis; if one did not know what was involved in the concept, no analysis could be forthcoming.
     From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 1)
     A reaction: This is the sort of problem that seemed to bug Plato a lot. You certainly can't analyse something if you don't understand it, but it seems obvious that you can illuminatingly analyse something of which you have a reasonable understanding.
No one has ever succeeded in producing an acceptable non-trivial analysis of anything [Lockwood]
     Full Idea: I cannot think of a single philosophically interesting concept that has been successfully and nontrivially analysed to most people's satisfaction.
     From: Michael Lockwood (Mind, Brain and the Quantum [1989], p.121)
Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA]
     Full Idea: Analytical philosophy excels in the piecemeal analysis of causation, perception, knowledge and so on, but there is a striking poverty of any synoptic vision of these independent studies.
     From: José A. Benardete (Metaphysics: the logical approach [1989], Ch.22)
Analytic philosophy focuses too much on forms of expression, instead of what is actually said [Tait]
     Full Idea: The tendency to attack forms of expression rather than attempting to appreciate what is actually being said is one of the more unfortunate habits that analytic philosophy inherited from Frege.
     From: William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], IV)
     A reaction: The key to this, I say, is to acknowledge the existence of propositions (in brains). For example, this belief will make teachers more sympathetic to pupils who are struggling to express an idea, and verbal nit-picking becomes totally irrelevant.
Analytic philosophy studies the unimportant, and sharpens tools instead of using them [Mautner]
     Full Idea: Critics of analytic philosophers accuse them of excessive attention to relatively unimportant matters, and of being more interested in sharpening tools than in using them.
     From: Thomas Mautner (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy [1996], p.111)
     A reaction: The last part is a nice comment. Both criticisms seem to me to contain some justice, but recently things have improved (notably in the new attention paid by analytical philosophy to metaphysics). In morality analytic philosophy seems superior.
Concern for rigour can get in the way of understanding phenomena [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: It is often the case that the concern for rigor gets in the way of a true understanding of the phenomena to be explained.
     From: Kit Fine (Replies on 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], 2)
     A reaction: This is a counter to Timothy Williamson's love affair with rigour in philosophy. It strikes me as the big current question for analytical philosophy - of whether the intense pursuit of 'rigour' will actually deliver the wisdom we all seek.
You can't understand love in terms of 'if and only if...' [Svendsen]
     Full Idea: I once began reading a philosophical article on love. The following statement soon came up: 'Bob loves Kate if and only if...' At that point I stopped reading. Such a formalized approach was unsuitable, because the actual phenomenon would be lost.
     From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Pref)
     A reaction: It is hard to disagree! However, if your best friend comes to you and says, 'I can't decide whether I am really in love with Kate; what do you think?', how are you going to respond. You offer 'if and only if..', but in a warm and sympathetic way!
The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false [Sorensen]
     Full Idea: The paradox of analysis says if a conceptual analysis states exactly what the original statement says, then the analysis is trivial; if it says something different from the original, then the analysis is mistaken. All analyses are trivial or false.
     From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.5)
     A reaction: [source is G.E. Moore] Good analyses typically give explanations, or necessary and sufficient conditions, or inferential relations. At their most trivial they at least produce a more profound dictionary than your usual lexicographer. Not guilty.
Naturalistic philosophers oppose analysis, preferring explanation to a priori intuition [Margolis/Laurence]
     Full Idea: Philosophers who oppose conceptual analysis identify their approach as being 'naturalistic'. Philosophy is supposed to be continuous with science, and philosophical theories are to be defended on explanatory grounds, not by a priori intuitions.
     From: E Margolis/S Laurence (Concepts [2009], 5.2)
     A reaction: [They cite Papineau 1993, Devitt 1996 aand Kornblith 2002] I think there is a happy compromise here. I agree that any philosophical knowledge should be continuous with science, but we shouldn't prejudge how the analytic branch of science is done.