Amiable Prolegomena

I have read the following little book with great interest, having written it. It has seemed to me, and it will undoubtedly seem to you, that it lacks most of the characteristics one has a right to expect of a professional performance. For example, it is not very neat; its limpidity is dubious; and it is not overly decisive. On the other hand the author, whom I have questioned closely on these matters, is while somewhat penitent not as apologetic as the canons of philosophical decency would seem to require. He has informed me that part of what the book is concerned with is the very notion of professional performance, particularly from the point of view of what one must presuppose in order that there be standards of professional performance. And to be sure, trying to speak of professional performance in a professional way without buying a certain set of criteria concerning professional performance is difficult. Probably because it is logically impossible.

I did mention it to the author that, in my opinion, this little book is more emotional than a philosophical essay should be, but he responded that he was not sure of that, and that was another one of those things the book was about. It seems to me then that this little book is about many things. Perhaps seldom in the history of philosophy has so small a book attempted to do so much and accomplished so little.

On the other hand I, for one, am willing to let people say what they want to say in the way they want to say it, though I admit that the maxim is somewhat revolutionary. If they want to say it loudly, I may wince, but I will allow them to do so. If they wish to be noisy, why not? After all, we are not running a library. And sometimes, the author informs me, people who yell are trying to say something. Indeed, that is why they are yelling, to let people know they are trying to say something. The author is of the unusual opinion that philosophy, like music and art, has upon occasion a right to be angry — say, hopping mad. It has this right, he insists, if there is good reason for anger; given such reason, he claims, somewhat repetitiously it seems to me, one has a right to be angry. Further, he asserts that to disguise this anger may be judicious subterfuge, but it is also deceit. I asked him if he thought that physics and chemistry have a right to be angry, but my only answer was a bewildered stare, from which I gather that the author does not believe that philosophy is physics and chemistry. I did take the liberty of pointing out to him that the fellow who yells may have nothing to say, and may just be yelling. He responded whether or not that is the case may easily be determined by listening, and perhaps that is true.

At this point I think I shall allow the author to speak for himself, and dissociate myself from his entire project.

Of Compasses and Gauntlets

This essay is addressed to the problem of the nature of philosophy, its cognitivity or lack of it. Perhaps many philosophers are already straight on this matter, but for myself and those who aren't, and for those who think they are, and aren't, a certain amount of unpleasant cogitation is in order. The essay is motivated by a number of things, but primarily perhaps by the difficulty of explaining to myself and others continuing philosophical disagreement, a phenomenon in our time overcome only in part by journal policies and hiring practices.

Perhaps the classical case in the philosophical clinic of the chronic worrier was Immanuel Kant, who, annoyed by perennial disagreement, sought to examine the limits and powers of human reason in philosophy's greatest attempt to establish a basis on which its cognitivity or lack of it might be delineated. As we know the result of his murky and magnificent analysis was a philosophical volcano that spewed forth more disagreement in the next two hundred years than the twenty centuries of relatively prosaic tumult it superseded.

The positivists too were upset by the vicious twaddle of purely verbal conflict, the solemn rhapsodies of metaphysicians whose profundity increased in direct ratio to the grammatical complexity of their utterances. Accordingly they set out to delimit and clarify the philosophical endeavor, dividing the world between the scientists and themselves. One of their passionate objectives was apparently getting philosophy in hand, refining it into something capable of judicious, exact treatment, making it something that an honest person could take seriously — determining its subject matter in such a way that one could be right or wrong, and others could find out.

A similar motivation might well seem to underlie the pseudopodic movements of ordinary language analysis. There in the linguistic habits of a given speech community, by fortunate coincidence the philosopher's, was a subject matter which was, at least within limits, empirically ascertainable. One can be right or wrong in assertions about how the expression 'free' is used, for example. One might then suppose that classical controversies might be resolved by examining how individuals use the expression 'free'. Of course, as it is now generally recognized by members of the movement, and was recognized several years earlier by nonmembers of the movement, how individuals use the expression 'free' is primarily relevant to the problem of how they use the expression 'free' and not to the classical controversies and problems to which philosophers had addressed themselves. On the other hand, as the ordinary language philosopher might point out, if that sort of thing is not relevant to the controversies over freedom, what is? That I think is a good challenge. In short, I see the commendable objective of the ordinary language analyst as the search for a criterion against which the correctness or incorrectness of philosophical assertions can be measured. That he finds this incredibly enough in ordinary language, almost always loosely and inadequately correlated with the comparative precision of experience, developed by nonphilosophers over hundreds of generations to deal with nonphilosophical problems and subserve nonphilosophical purposes, is less to be deplored than the fact is to be celebrated that he has honestly sought to find such a criterion. Many philosophers, it seems, have not done even that much. The ordinary language analysts, at least largely in the past, have sought, as did the Kantians and positivists, to establish the cognitivity of philosophy.

If we look across the Atlantic, or Channel, as the case may be, we can also see people concerned about cognitivity, about resolving disagreement. There perhaps introspection or intuition or some such unnerving methodology or nonmethodology is supposed to supply the criterion, and there again the fact that cognitivity is sought is more to be commended than the fact deplored that it is being sought in perhaps...