believe important, goal of showing that there is practical value to exploring the connections between them.
Now that we have discussed the fact that I believe there to be at least two relatively distinct meanings of “analytic philosophy,” we can specify that I will argue that this primary conclusion is true on both readings of the term. That is to say, I will try to give reasons to believe (a) that there is much to be gained by bringing together inquiry involving matters of race, gender, and analytic philosophy, the method of philosophizing which emphasizes the centrality of the philosophy of language and logic and (b) that there is much to be gained by bringing together inquiry involving matters of race, gender, and analytic philosophy, the historical movement in the discipline of philosophy. Furthermore, I will argue for both disambiguations of this thesis with specific examples, which directly show something gained for our understanding of social justice issues, for our understanding of analytic philosophy, or both in some cases. More specifically, I will focus on arguing for the historical claim that many early analytic philosophers intended for their work to be public and political in nature, while trying to make good on this intention by showing how analytic thought can be useful for work on social justice issues of contemporary concern.
Given that we have two different readings of the primary thesis, I will argue for them in two separate sections. The first will be dedicated to the primary thesis on the philosophical method reading of “analytic philosophy” and the second to the historical movement reading of “analytic philosophy.” Since the method I associate with the words “analytic philosophy” focuses on the philosophy of language and on logic, this first section will include one chapter on each. In particular, chapter 1 will be on a specific example showing how we can be better practitioners of analytic philosophy and understand its history in a more just fashion by utilizing tools from analytic philosophy of language concerning how social identity influences the reception of certain speech acts. More specifically, we will use Rebecca Kukla (2014)’s notion of discursive injustice to weigh in on the (in)famous debate between Scott Soames and Quentin Smith over who deserves initial credit for the so-called “new theory of reference”—Ruth Barcan Marcus or Saul Kripke. Slightly oversimplifying, I will argue for something of a compromise position where, rather than Kripke being guilty of plagiarizing Marcus, the entire discipline of philosophy is guilty of gendered discursive injustice with respect to the reception of Marcus’ philosophical work. In chapter 2, I turn to arguing that we do not have a proper understanding of logic if we do not recognize its ethical, political, and practical significance. Here, I build off of John Corcoran’s “The Inseparability of Logic and Ethics” as well as some of Marcus’ and Arthur Prior’s work connecting logic and ethics that we might hopefully spend more time on if we had taken some of the historical lessons from chapter 1.
After providing specific examples of how the philosophy of language and logic can be importantly helpful for inquiry into ethical and political matters, the next section will focus on how the early phase of the historical movement of analytic philosophy can be similarly connected to matters of race, gender, and justice. Here, I will continue the pattern of structuring the argument around specific examples showing particular contributions to each of these dialectics by bringing together inquiry into critical theories of race, gender, justice, and oppression and inquiry into the history of analytic philosophy. As a reminder, I structure the history of analytic philosophy into the early phase of 1898–1970, the middle phase of 1970–1995, and the contemporary phase of 1995–present. From there, I break down the early phase into the following five stages:
[S1] 1898–1914: Moore, Russell, and the rebellion against British idealism
[S2] 1914–1926: Wittgenstein, Russell, and logical atomism
[S3] 1926–1940: Logical empiricism and Cambridge analysis
[S4] 1940–1960: Ordinary language philosophy
[S5] 1960–1970: Naturalism, modal logic, and traditional ethical theorizing.
Again, because the feeling is that such a thing cannot be done, this section will primarily consist of direct and individual case studies showing that we can shed some light on debates over, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement, the silencing of women, and ignorance of contributions of, and injustices faced by, people with marginalized social identities by bringing these debates into contact with thought and trends from each stage of the early analytic movement. So as to avoid the rebuttal that these examples are cherry-picked and do not show anything of general interest, attention will be paid to indisputably central trends from each of the five stages of early analytic philosophy. In particular, I will discuss issues of race and gender in relation to:
[S1] The focus on common sense from the first uncontroversial analytic philosophers, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. In particular, I will look at one common way of understanding “common sense” and how standard problems from judgment aggregation theory show that sets of beliefs meeting this criterion are likely to be inconsistent and standard work from sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and critical theorists show that giving a place of privilege to such beliefs is likely to perpetuate problematic biases, prejudices, and oppressive ignorance.
[S2] The critique of metaphysics and ethics from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. More specifically, I argue that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus started a trend of viewing metaphysics as almost like a disguised form of ethics. I illustrate this general view, and problems with it, by showing how it can be applied to Liam Kofi Bright (2017)’s account of the logical empiricists’ views on the metaphysics of race (voluntarist racial eliminativism) and their ethico-political motivations (ending racist divisiveness and promoting internationalist politics).
[S3] The verification principle and scientific worldview of the logical empiricists. I argue that these pieces of the overarching framework of the logical empiricists had ethical and political motivations throughout. In doing so, I enter into a debate involving Thomas Uebel, Sarah Richardson, and Amy Wuest over whether or not the logical empiricists had a “political philosophy of science.” I ultimately argue that recent work from Liam Kofi Bright and Catarina Dutilh Novaes give us good reason to think they did. This is also shown to be less of an aberration than it might have seemed as other major figures of this stage who were only associates of the logical empiricists (n.b. Susan Stebbing) and those who set themselves in direct opposition to them (n.b. Karl Popper) had similarly political philosophies of science.
[S4] The ordinary language philosophy of H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin. I argue here for the claim that trying to replace, or even respond to, someone’s saying “Black lives matter” with someone’s saying “all lives matter” is mistaken and misdirected. Furthermore, I will show how we can utilize Paul Grice’s logic of conversation to build a strong case for this thesis and Luvell Anderson’s work to show that this is not a unique case.
[S5] The naturalism of W. V. O. Quine and the development of modal logic, which made Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity possible. In particular, I will discuss applications of Quinean methodology to issues of race and gender by Charles Mills and Sally Haslanger, as well as how we can see these two as more Quinean than Quine sometimes was. In particular, their use of social science and moral theory surrounding race and gender utilizes the consequences of a naturalized epistemology and ontology more consistently than Quine’s own work.
Before moving on, this sketch of my argument provides another opportunity to recognize my own standpoint as a privileged white man writing about, and for the sake of, people with marginalized and oppressed social identities. Again, I recognize there are many potential pitfalls in doing so and that I must take, for example, Kristie Dotson’s “caution that when addressing and identifying forms of epistemic oppression one needs to endeavor not to perpetuate epistemic oppression” (Dotson 2012, 24). This sketch begins to make clear some of what I will use to limit the hindrances
