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 that inevitably come along with a standpoint like my own. In particular, as the references to work I will engage show, I will be building off of the work of thinkers whose standpoints give them more direct access to the phenomena of racial and gender oppression throughout. Furthermore, I will consistently be looking to come up with suggestions for constraints to be put on the types of engagements I am encouraging—constraints which hopefully limit the potential of hegemonic standpoints to infect analytic philosophizing. That said, I hope that my readers will not hesitate to point out those places where I have failed on these fronts.
§0.5 Previewing the Rest of the Book
As has been alluded to, the main themes of this book will be the history of early analytic philosophy, critical theories of race and gender, the philosophy of language, and logic. Put in relation to these themes, the goals are to investigate what potential there is for logical and linguistic analysis to contribute to scholarship and activism on race and gender, as well as whether or not there is precedent for such work in the history of analytic philosophy. After going through such investigations, we will find evidence for the following subsidiary theses—(a) analytic philosophy should be used to contribute to understanding and eradicating oppression and injustice—the book primarily focusing on racial and gender oppression, but occasionally discussing sexuality, disability, religion, and class, (b) at each stage of early analytic philosophy, there was a significant body of work which was motivated by and/or easily lends itself to such work and, finally, (c) this has been missed because the analytic movement went from a revolutionary to a hegemonic tradition—occupying this position of power in society along with several other trends helping it to develop privileged, dominant tendencies that we find all over power structures in modern western society.
Summing things up in terms of a structure to integrate these primary themes and theses, the nine chapters of the book can be broken down into a four-step progression. This introduction was intended to present the topics (the history of early analytic philosophy and critical theories of race and gender), the background which makes this a worthwhile choice of topics (the extremely varied positions on the relationship, the existence of injustices within the discipline, the public perception of philosophy), and the way I conceive of the methodology and history of early analytic philosophy, which will serve as a framework for the rest of the book (a commitment to the centrality of the philosophy of language and logic to the practice of philosophy, the ability to be broken down into five rough and overlapping stages). The first and second chapters investigate ways in which we can connect the main tools of analytic methodology—the philosophy of language and logic—to social, public, and ethical matters. The third through seventh chapters of the book then go stage by stage through early analytic philosophy, connecting some