Extremely informal something-I-just-think-not-properly-researched long thread on the recent history of analytic philosophy, according to what I think the standard myth is (not necessarily something I endorse in all points, and it obviously misses out loads)...
...so the origin myth of analytic philosophy has it emerging from a kind of melding of an anti-Hegelian school in British philosophy, logicians working on the foundations of mathematics in Germany and Poland, and the Vienna Circle group's reflections on science and meaning...
...these were, per the myth, all very exciting intellectual movements; propelled on by rejections of what had been established dogmas, in close connection with the advanced scientific work of their day, and in Vienna and through Russell tapped into progressive social movements...
...the standard narrative then has post-WW2 UK & America as dominant and somewhat of a melding with strands of pragmatist thought through Quine, Morris, and Nagel, and in the US, and a shift to the famous ordinary language school in Britain via Austin, Grice, and later Witt...
...at this point, it seems, the standard narrative has analytic philosophy propelled by developments more in philosophy than in the sciences, and not even movements entirely internal or friendly to analytic philosophy; pragmatism in the US, and a sceptical challenge in the UK...
...history now gets a bit too recent for there to be a standard myth developed, but if I had to guess it is that there was then a struggle against the sort of anti-realist tendencies that had dominated (the last great representative of which is taken to be Dummett or a Putnam)...
...when eventually through Kripke's developments in modal logic and philosophy of language, the scientific realists in the 80s, and David Lewis' system building, the agenda is now set for what I think was still dominant even when I was an undergrad in 2007-2010...
... (normative realism also comes back, and Rawls makes a kind of robustly high Church analytical political philosophy cool)...
... in this version of analytic philosophy the mission is to preserve a healthy-respect-for-science-which-means-endorsing-it-as-in-some-sense-true-and-knowable, straying as little from common sense as possible, and uphold a sort of broadly liberal vision of the social order...
...this was for its day exciting in its own ways. Metaphysics was fully revived, new mathematical tools developed by analytic philosophers in logic deployed, philosophers had a chance to fight on their side of the science wars and then later against Christian fundamentalism...
...but I think it's running out of steam. Previous rounds of internal scepticism (from ordinary language philosophers, or Kuhn, or Rorty) were incorporated or dismissed to the internal satisfaction of practitioners, but I don't think the challenge from naturalism is going away...
...since experimental philosophy caused methodological concern, and rivalries developed between sciencey philosophers and core analytic epistemologists, metaphysicians, and philosophers of mind; I think being seen as counter-scientific is a big blow to the field's self-image...
...further, to address contemporary political or social concerns it seems the done thing is actually to reach outside the mythologically conceived analytic philosophical tradition & draw from African American or Chinese philosophy, or critical theorists or even sometimes Hegel...
...(an interesting story to tell is the role of feminist philosophy in this; marginalised in the middle period especially during the science wars, but successfully mounted a challenge by embracing both some of the naturalistic x-phi results and drawing from critical theory)...
...maybe this will just be the end of analytic phil. But I think the strength of analytic philosophy (as Eric Schliesser always reminds me) has been a rather rapid and extreme mutability it displays, hence ability to adapt. On present trends one might predict this will lead to...
...analytic philosophy becoming a kind of naturalised critical theory; with a Bayesian epistemology, metaphysics from physics, phil mind from cog sci & biology, and political philosophy from Du Bois & Adorno. The pragmatists or Vienna Circle would seem like natural antecedents...
...but I think it is too early to say, and in any case I obviously hang round in strange circles. What I'm more confident in, however, is that there will be major change; this is the historical pattern of analytic philosophy, and I think it shows signs of Lakatosian degeneration.
Conversations with @nescio13, @KathleenACreel, @jasonintrator, @BrandonWarmke, @JazzArtemis, @OlufemiOTaiwo, @haicinnamon, @shengokai, @NeuroYogacara, @TJBreed, @jackeselbst, @cecilymwhiteley all in the back of my mind in this long thread!
P.s. this is a very male dominated story; that is deliberate on my part, I think it's a sexist myth. That said, the standard myth could well be (in the logician's sense) conservatively extended by crediting Foot et al with the revival of normative realism. See @parenthesis_in!
