Comments and Critique

Notes on Contributors

Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies is the first guide to cover both the Anglo-American analytic and European continental traditions. Organized thematically, the volume thoroughly discusses the major movements and fields of each tradition and features the contributions of highly distinguished specialists in their fields. This book is divided into three sections. The first is devoted to highlighting the multidimensional work of philosophers identified with the analytic tradition, with Nicholas Rescher writing on neoidealism, Josephine Donovan commenting on feminist philosophy, Tyler Burge discussing the philosophy of language and mind, and Robert Hanna reflecting on Kant's legacy. The second section presents the thought of those who identified themselves with the continental tradition, featuring Jean Grondin on hermeneutics, Leonard Lawlor on phenomenology, Charles Scott on postmodernism, and Babette Babich on the philosophy of science. This volume also covers logical positivism, naturalism, pragmatism, aesthetics, existentialism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, structuralism, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. The final section addresses concurrent trends in Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and African philosophy, and a comprehensive introduction by the editor not only provides a thorough outline of the problems and issues of the analytic and continental traditions but also boldly challenges the conviction that the two approaches must be rivals. Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies is an invaluable overview of the ideas that have shaped a monumentally important century in the history of philosophy, offering an unusually panoramic perspective that allows readers to form their own interpretations of original materials.

In this article, we examine the anglo-saxon archaeological interpretation of the philosophy of science throughout the last century. With reference to an idea developed by Jane Kelley and Marsha Hanen, we define the former interpretation as the “narrow perspective” of the philosophy of science. This approach has focused exclusively on the analytical tradition of the philosophy of science; the foremost example is the New Archaeology interest in logical positivism. In the second section, we examine the consequences of this narrow perspective and we conclude that it is necessary to develop a “wide perspective” of the philosophy of science in archaeology.

The modern philosophy of science is genetically related to the formed in the modern era classical philosophy of science. The latter, in turn, was formed under the influence of developments in the New European (“new”) science in the late 16th – 18th centuries. The new European science has acquired the status of classical one, because it is the initial stage of the modern type of science. The distinctive feature of this modern type is that experiment has become its basis and method. The article reveals the specifics of experiment as an activity associated with the search for facts that can confirm or refute an assumption/theory/law. An overview of the emergence of the experimental method in natural science and humanities is carried out. The concepts of Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Immanuel Kant are considered as varieties of classical philosophy of science. It is concluded that in the case of Francis Bacon, the philosophy of science represents a methodology of science, extremely approximated to and aimed at the objective world studied by science, revealing the laws of experimental activity and the rules of the method of induction, which make exploration of nature possible. This type of philosophy of science runs from Francis Bacon to Auguste Comte and the whole positivist tradition. The second type of classical philosophy of science constitutes the axiomatic-deductive methodology of science. It has its origin in the philosophy of René Descartes and brings science and philosophy quite closely together, since in this methodology it is philosophy that sets the fundamentals/axioms of the deductive method. This branch leads to Hegel and the phenomenological tradition. Immanuel Kant builds a critical methodology that claims to overcome the limitations of both empirical-inductive and axiomatic-deductive methodologies. In this methodology, experiment is comprehended through such a concept as “the limits of possible experience”. A peculiar continuation of the Kantian variety of the philosophy of science is the critical rationalism by Karl Popper.

Misunderstanding of phenomenology and positivism as perspectives upon the philosophy and practice of science has important implications for the future of geographic research and research funding in America. Positivistic perspectives on the philosophy of science appear to be seen as fundable, whereas the scientific status and the possibilities for funding of phenomenological and other perspectives on the philosophy of science seem to be in question.

The conceptual dichotomy of Erklaren and Verstehen (explaining vs. understanding) has a revealing dual status. On the one hand, it has something of an antiquated air to it, as we loosely associate its origins with the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and other nineteenth-century German philosophers who are not widely read any more, at least not within contemporary Anglo-American history and philosophy of the human sciences. At the same time, however, remnants of the dichotomy still come up in various guises and in various areas of contemporary philosophy and philosophy of science. One example is the long-standing debate over the logical status of action explanations (“reasons vs. causes”) in philosophy of mind (Davidson 1980), and associated issues of “teleological explanations” and the explanatory status of laws of nature in the philosophy of the human sciences (Dray 1957; Hempel 1965; von Wright 1971). Another is the question of whether the subject matter of the social sciences requires a special type of interpretative, hermeneutic, or perhaps even empathetic, “access” (Collingwood 1946; Winch 1964; Taylor [1971] 1985). More recently, there has been renewed interest in the question of how to explicate our capacity to interpret another person’s actions (see the recent suggestion that the “theory-theory” vs. “simulation theory” distinction is similar to some aspects of the Erklaren/Verstehen distinction) (Kogler and Stueber 2000). And within mainstream analytical philosophy of the social sciences, one of the central topics has long been the question of whether social facts/events can be reduced to the explanations of the actions of individuals (e.g., Kincaid 1997), raising questions about the units at which explanatory and/or interpretive efforts ought to be directed. (“individualism” vs. “holism”). This question can be traced back to early twentieth-century debates in economics and other emerging social sciences (Udehn 2001).

There are various similarities and differences between the respective approaches to analytic philosophy of Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and Stebbing. But is there anything in common that could be taken to characterize analytic philosophy as a whole? ‘So what is analytic philosophy?’ explains that analytic philosophy is ‘analytic’ in an extra special sense because it made use of modern logic together with all the new techniques that emerged in its wake and the greater understanding of the relationship between logic and language that this generated. It looks at later analytic philosophy—ordinary language philosophy, ideal language philosophy, and scientific philosophy—before considering what is wrong and good about analytic philosophy.

Feminist Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition Anita Superson (bio) and Samantha Brennan (bio) What is analytical feminism? In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ann E. Cudd defines it as follows: "Analytical feminism applies analytic concepts and methods to feminist issues and applies feminist concepts and insights to issues that traditionally have been of interest to analytic philosophers." But why the need consciously to name the approach "analytic" as opposed to merely "feminist"? The problem to which the name is a response is that within philosophy there has been a tendency to categorize all feminist work as tied to other alternative approaches to philosophy, when in fact much feminist work is closer in method to the analytic tradition. This should not come as a shock as most North American philosophers, including feminist philosophers, receive an education that is analytic in orientation. Some, of course, go on to subject the analytic tradition to feminist critique and in the end find that analytic methods are either part of the problem or simply inadequate for addressing feminist concerns. However, not all philosophers who think of their work as feminist reject the methods of analytic philosophy. Some philosophers find the tools of analytic philosophy useful in understanding the practices and concepts of oppression, subordination, sexism, and exploitation. Readers of this issue of Hypatia will see examples of this in most of the essays we have included. But a puzzle does remain. Why has the problem of women's oppression remained largely invisible within the tradition of mainstream analytic philosophy? Here one of the strengths of analytic philosophy comes into play, since analytic philosophy routinely subjects its own methods to philosophical scrutiny. Feminist analytic philosophers who have looked critically at the tradition have attributed the failure of analytic philosophy to address women's concerns [End Page 1] to specific aspects of the analytic approach to problems. For example, in some instances, analytic philosophers may have failed to apply their own methods consistently. This seems to be the case in philosophy of language, where the gendered assumptions built into language had gone unnoticed, hence unchallenged, by mainstream philosophers of language. It took feminist philosophers of language to point out that the problems with male terms as universal are not just political; such language is also problematically ambiguous.1 Feminists have also faulted analytic philosophy for a failure to be thoroughgoing enough in the questioning of assumptions which ground philosophical investigations. Such criticisms are consistent with the kinds of criticisms of method that go on within the analytic tradition and so need not constitute an objection to the approach as a whole. What makes analytical feminism feminist is, according to Cudd, the insistence on "recognizing and contesting sexism (practices that take women and feminine things to be inferior to men and masculine things) and androcentrism (practices that take males or men or men's life experiences to be the norm or the ideal for human life)." One of the notable features of work in analytical feminism is that it crosses traditional boundaries within philosophy between work in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, and work in moral, legal, and political philosophy. But such boundary-crossing work can often have a hard time finding an appropriate venue. Neither "feminist enough" for some of the more radical societies, and yet "too feminist" for the mainstream meetings, analytic feminist approaches needed their own place for presentation and discussion. The Society for Analytical Feminism was founded in 1991 to address precisely these concerns. Its goal is to promote analytical approaches to issues of feminist concern. Since its inception, the society has been meeting annually as part of the group meeting program at the Central Division meetings and at either the Eastern or Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association. In response to a growing interest in analytical feminism, reflected in a respectable increase in membership in the society, in June 2004, the group held its first stand-alone conference with a full program of papers and participation from more than sixty feminist philosophers—faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. The conference, "Feminist Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition," was cosponsored by the society and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario...

A major controversy in contemporary philosophy of science concerns the possibility and desirability of its ‘naturalization.’ In this paper I review the philosophical controversy concerning naturalism, and investigate the role it might play in the science classroom. I argue that science students can benefit from explicit study of this controversy, and from explicit consideration of the extent to which philosophy of science can be studied naturalistically. More specifically, I suggest that such consideration can enhance students' understanding of the nature of ‘natural’ science, of the nature and importance of philosophy of science, and of the relationship between the two — and that these benefits accrue to science education whichever philosophical view concerning naturalization proves to be correct. My hope is that the paper demonstrates the benefits to be gained from explicit consideration in the science classroom of an important issue in the philosophy of science.

Recent developments in the philosophy of science, particularly those falling under the rubric of “scientific realism,” have earned growing recognition among theorists of international relations but have failed to generate substantive programs of research. Consequently, the empirical relevance of much philosophical discourse, such as that centering on the agent-structure problem in social theory, remains unestablished. This article attempts to bridge the gap between the philosophy and practice of science by outlining a model of international structure based on the principles of scientific realism and by considering its implications for a structural research program in international relations theory. Appealing to Imre Lakatos's methodology of theorychoice, the article presents an ontological case for adopting a “transformational” model of structure over the “positional” model developed in the work of Kenneth Waltz. The article demonstrates that the positional approach offers no conceptual or explanatory hold on those features of the international structure that are the intended products of state action. In conclusion, the article argues that the stakes in the agent-structure debate include the capacity to generate integrative structural theory and the ability to theorize the possibilities for peaceful change in the international system.

In scholarly debates, as well as in everyday parlance, we tend to pull science and technology apart: science gives us theory, and technology applies it. In practice, however, science and technologies are highly intertwined. In Techno-Scientific Practices: An Informational Approach, Federica Russo looks at the practice of science and elucidates the role of technologies and instruments in the process of knowledge production. In this exercise, it becomes evident that technologies cannot be analyzed on their own, but always in relation to epistemic agents. Thus, Techno-Scientific Practices emphasizes the importance of analyzing the process of knowledge production in techno-scientific contexts, in which there is a triad of relations to look at: us, the instruments, and the world. The book thus builds bridges between the philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, and science and technology studies in an unprecedent way.

In scholarly debates, as well as in everyday parlance, we tend to pull science and technology apart: science gives us theory, and technology applies it. In practice, however, science and technologies are highly intertwined. In Techno-Scientific Practices: An Informational Approach, Federica Russo looks at the practice of science and elucidates the role of technologies and instruments in the process of knowledge production. In this exercise, it becomes evident that technologies cannot be analyzed on their own, but always in relation to epistemic agents. Thus, Techno-Scientific Practices emphasizes the importance of analyzing the process of knowledge production in techno-scientific contexts, in which there is a triad of relations to look at: us, the instruments, and the world. The book thus builds bridges between the philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, and science and technology studies in an unprecedent way.

Analyzing social wrongs

One of the most prominent developments in 20(superscript th) century western philosophy was the outburst of analytical philosophy. Not only can we find its influence within the fields of linguistic analysis, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of the mind, we can also see its impact in the study of political philosophy. Quentin Skinner stands out as one of the most important theorists. Besides making clear the implication of speech-act theory in Skinner's methodology, the purpose of this article is to respond to a common critique of Skinner: namely that Skinner seems to overemphasize the importance of the author's intention to restore the meaning of texts, since this accentuation of intention leads to a seemingly unacceptable conclusion that the literal meaning of the texts itself is non-essential. The author of this article, however, tries to argue that this critique is based on a misunderstanding of Skinner's idea. Since, for Skinner, meaning is a cluster concept which contains several levels of significance, it would be far from enough to merely focus on the literal meaning of any text. To fully understand a work, it is necessarily to take into account the author's intention.

This article proposes a new account of the relation between the sciences and common sense. A debate between Alfred North Whitehead and Arthur S. Eddington highlighted both the tendency of the natural sciences to repudiate commonsense conceptions of the world and the greater closeness of the human sciences to common sense. While analytic writers have mostly regarded these features as self-evident, I offer an explanation of them by appealing to Wilhelm Dilthey and the phenomenological tradition. Dilthey suggested that, whereas the natural sciences could individuate their phenomena purely from empirical data, human sciences were compelled to refer to commonsense understanding in order to individuate mental phenomena. I apply this insight to episodes from the history of science, and use it to contrast the work of Alfred Schutz and Carl G. Hempel in philosophy of social and natural science. In the final section, I argue that Dilthey’s framework also offers resources to challenge present-day reductionism about mental phenomena.