[MD] Academic philosophy

[david]

Arlo said to dmb:

You may be right. I was never that interested in Bertrand Russell's ideas to take a course covering his ideas. So maybe this is how analytic philosophers think. I will say, however, that I did take a course covering Wittgenstein (listed as an analytic philosopher on Wikipedia), and the professor was not at all like JC-per-Auxier suggests. I never got a sense that it was supposed to be 'impersonal', but this was a course mostly about his ideas concerning language, and maybe that's why (Wittgenstein argued that language could not be separated from the reality it described). Is it even possible for language to be impersonal? (Don't answer that, I know the idea of a Universal Grammar still floats around out there.)


dmb says:

Wittgenstein is a special case. He wrote two major books. The first one was a kind of response to Russell and was quickly adopted by those who would be called positivists of the Vienna Circle. They are probably the best examples of everything Pirsig attacks. But Wittgenstein's second book is basically anti-philosophical and deeply disturbed the positivists who had worshiped his first book. Interestingly, I think, Wittgenstein read a lot of William James between the two books. The big idea to take away, the say, is that there is no such thing as a private, language is inherently a collective effort and can only work within a shared intersubjective space. The dude was totally brilliant. I'd like to know much more about his work but that would mean reading Russell, so that makes into a very unpleasant task. (James thought Russell was dumber than a bag of rocks.) 

Arlo continued:

But, yeah. This is hardly representative of philosophers, or the academy, in general. And its not even original. Pirsig made the same criticisms to 'objectivity' in the, then, dominant Boas tradition. However, in the years since this 'objectivist tradition' has waned. Raging against Boas in 2014, as an exemplar of all anthropology (or even the entire academy) would be absurd. Sure, there are still Boasians around, but you have an increasing presence of Tomaselloans, and others in a broad spectrum of cultural anthropological positions, many of who look to Bourdieu, not Boas, as a guide.



dmb says:

Yea, exactly. The hiring committee that had asked about teaching James was full of academic philosophers, I assume, and James was certainly a top notch professional. Auxier works at an actual university, apparently. I mean, we don't even have to go outside of John's example to find an example that doesn't fit his slanderous portrait. 


Continental philosophers and Pragmatists aren't the only major alternatives to the analytic style. There is also post-analytic philosophy, a name that suggests analytic philosophy is on the wane or even that days of analytic philosophy are numbered.


First paragraph of Wikipedia's page on "Postanalytic philosophy": (Please notice their "detachment from objective truth", John.)


"Postanalytic philosophy describes a detachment from the mainstream philosophical movement of analytic philosophy, which is the predominant school of thought in English-speaking countries. Postanalytic philosophy derives mainly from contemporary American thought, especially from the works of philosophers Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and W.V. Quine. The term is closely associated with the much broader movement of contemporary American pragmatism, which, loosely defined, advocates a detachment from objective truth with an emphasis on convention, utility, and social progress."