Types of conceptual enquiry : a case for thinking there is a type that does not depend on the notion of analyticity
Abstract
Many if not all Analytic Philosophers in the first seventy years or so of Analytic
Philosophy thought that enquiry into concepts had a significant place in philosophy.
This is not a view shared by most contemporary Analytic Philosophers. One reason for
this change in attitude is Quine’s famous critique of analyticity. Enquiry into concepts
had been thought to depend on a satisfactory notion of analyticity. Many thought that
Quine had shown that no such notion is available. It is true that the traditional model of
Conceptual Analysis operated with the notion of analyticity. The reductive project of
Conceptual Analysis was supposed to issue in analytic truths that were necessarily true
and knowable a priori. Furthermore the necessity of these truths, and the fact that they
were knowable a priori were accounted for in terms of their analyticity. I argue that
there is an alternative model of Conceptual Enquiry which does not require a notion of
analyticity to do the work it does. I argue that the notion of analyticity is not central to
the style of philosophising of the Ordinary Language Philosophers. Major ‘Ordinary
Language Philosophers’ did not appeal to the notion of analyticity in describing or
accounting for their work. Neither is such a notion required to account for their work.
The upshot is that one ought not to conclude that enquiry into concepts is redundant for
philosophical purposes on account of there being no satisfactory notion of analyticity.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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