Analytical Philosophy is Dead 💀

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[Bilboswaggins]

It’s an endless word game at this point

[jrshipley]

Analytic philosophy is very alive and the methods developed in Cambridge, Oxford, and Vienna continue to shed light on the nature of logic, language, information, and thought. Analytic philosophy hasn't been organized around a shared program of analysis or understanding of the analytic/synthetic distinction since the 1950s. As with many traditions, the usefulness of characteristic methods has endured beyond the ideological commitments of the originators, and criticisms of those ideological commitments (analyticity, confirmation theory of meaning) does not negate the continuing usefulness of the methods characteristic (logical precision, conceptual distinction, and scientific philosophy) of the analytic tradition.

Some of the most exciting work in philosophy right now is coming from people who value both the analytic and phenomenological methods and practices. I know a Sartre expert who was trained by a Russell scholar and works on models of consciousness with a neuroscientist who reads Lacan. Anyone who appreciates the grand difficulty of the philosophical enterprise should at least somewhat ecumenical these days.

[Jorge-xfgs]

If only continental philosophers would admit that they just don't know math.

[GottfriedLeibnizYT]

Well, if that's the case, it just means your best shot to do proper philosophy is dead. And of course, the status of continental philosophy as gibberish still holds.

[SeanAnthony-jf]

This is actually a humanity's crisis. If only Aristotle is here to defend Philosophy. But most Philosophers now studies more to recent Philosophers works, which is very important. But Philosophers should also contribute to understanding of every realm of knowledge esp. Science that is superfluous, like in times of Ancient Greek. Even though they are not making a scientific discoveries— they are in their own righteousness built upon from these logical assumptions that helps emergence of a lot of unique fields. And indeed even systematic use of knowledge (Science and the emphasis of Empirical evidence and experiment) that is now massively popular— that even great scientists undermine the importance of its own father Philosophy. He dismissed all kind of knowledge even Metaphysics. I hope contemporary Philosophers would make this amount of progress and creativity on how to utilize knowledge that is, Scientists cannot do. There should be another Philosophical school or movement where it emphasized different method of pursuing wisdom and inquiry of natural world.

[dionysianapollomarx]

Unger's reasons for his conclusion are 1) analytic philosophers do not concern themselves with concrete reality and 2) preferring to argue around with mere words and concepts. The origin he says is with the rise of "ordinary language philosophy." This is correct, as that is the origin of the obsession with how things are said rather than what they're for, which was common to analytic philosophy.

If analytic philosophy had taken the route of Wilfrid Sellars, the classical pragmatists, and the neopragmatists, or even if going a divergent direction from the Continentals but developing from the best of Medieval thought, at the very least, a still-born "tradition" might have been resuscitated and become actually useful and insightful for life and for pointing to new ways of thinking, rather than basically being an undead discipline constantly riding on the coattails of other disciplines if not uselessly navel-gazing. In fact, Wittgenstein was the earliest to jump ship in his Philosophical Investigations. A founding father killing the darling idea is a sign of bad things to come, but the logical positivists did not listen.

Right now, the only worthwhile places to read analytic philosophy is in places where they're hardly being philosophical at all, because in those non-philosophical places they at least provide real, useful insight (e.g. logic, history of philosophy, cognitive science, even physics and computer science, etc.). They are actually somewhat productive there as metatheorists, but there is no analytic philosophy of death, for example, like with Heidegger's ideas on death. If that's the case, then that's not actually philosophy anymore the way the Continentals see it, even the more scientifically inclined like Cassirer or even Nietzsche before he abandoned his dissertation topic.

[hassanmir]

analytic philosophy is now a subset of cognitive science which is a field to be tied in with neuroscience and linguistics, and even phenomenology as with the work of Andy clark and Verveake. William James & Whitehead revived metaphysics. European philosophy past Hegel is more literary criticism or psychoanalytical as opposed to real philosophy.

[childintime]

I don't know what you're talkin about, it is the dominant tradition in philosophy departments all around the world 💀

[marc]

A lot of ideas from analytical philosophy are still very present in cognitive science and the philosophy of logic. It clearly has evolved in the last hundred years but there is still a huge importance to it, especially regarding the understanding of the fundamentals of AI.

[moodbox_no]

Dia-Logos is the sustainable way to orient the being towards Being.

[EcstaticTemporality]

Do we have a date to put on that tombstone? :)

[DelandaBaudLacanian]

Deconstruction is where it's at imho, and a return to theology and psychoanalysis. I'll have to read Peter Unger's "Empty Ideas" work. Thank you Dr. Neiderhauser for your timely and pertinent videos!

[sergiosatelite]

One must we therefore collapse into to the other side of the binary — phenomenology — as if the entire enterprise is 100 years old? Any other options on the menu? What else might have been happening when the Cold War determined logical positivism was the least threatening form of reflection to the status quo?

[LECityLECLEC]

thanks for sharing your thoughts God bless!

[hss]

Unger is right about analytic metaphysics of Williamson, Fine and Armstrong which provide some interesting interpretations of modal language and logic. These interpretations remain however, without serious applications, 'empty', as Unger says. However the pragmatist/expressivist branch of (post)analytic philosophy (McDowell, Brandom, Rescher, Price, Stekeler-Weithofer etc.) is definitely promising. And since 'speculative realism' as vacant as 'analytic metaphysics' so-called analytic philosophy is perhaps only dead to the extent that so-called continental philosophy is dead. Thanks for your videos.

[jamesduke]

lol, Quine explicitly argued that something only meaningly exists if it can be formalized.

[Koko]

Here's an equally valid counter-argument: Analytic philosophy is alive – an analytic philosopher said so. Phenomenologists didn't pay any attention and have no clue what they're talking about. Also, sadly, question can be formalized.

[dyphergorean]

Why can't questions be formulated?

[xenocrates]

Thanks for posting this. Unfortunately many anglo-american philosophy departments are stuck in the 1930's and can't seem to find a way out.

[Lissentewmi]

I can't believe people put so much stock into analytical when 1) no one outside of elite academia gives a flying fig about any major philosophers outside the continental tradition (which sucks because Wittgenstein fucking rules) but b) people are still doing principia matematica shit which is just "this is my specific way of interpreting information, isnt it so thorough?" there main merit i see in analytical right now is in the study of emotion. good to have a humanities perspective. but im very much into the idea of postempiricism