Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Former Principal
K.L.D.A.V(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Those schools of thought who agree that careful attention to language is highly valuable in philosophy are variously called “Linguistic Analysis” “Analytical Philosophy” and “Linguistic empiricism”. Some thinkers in this group have felt a need to reform ordinary language since it is vague and imprecise others have held that our common stock of words is more to be trusted than anything’s philosophers might produce. Linguistic analysis has not produced the degree of agreement even among the adherents, that might be expected if they system “works”. On the other hand it needs more time to prove itself and for development of its application to Education.
The systems of philosophy like Naturalism, Idealism and the other great metaphysical foundations can be used only with some awkwardness as we turn towards the relatively new mode of philosophizing some time called Linguistic analysis. This is partly because the analysts do not take any positions as a group on most of these issues and partly because the issues themselves are called under suspicion.
Basically, the analytic view is that philosophy is a sickness which arose because me were sometimes heedless of the pitfalls of language, and which can be healed by translating abstruse questions into simple, testable ones.
Historical Retrospect of Analytic Philosophies
Logical positivism can be looked as the direct ancestor of Analytic philosophy. August Comte’s statements have meaning become the rallying cry among the scientists and former scientists who were interested in philosophy. The group grew out of a seminar conducted by Moritz Schlick in 1923 n Vienna. They often criticized philosophy of few like David Hume, were treated with scorn. Even the fundamental laws of Physics were rejected as meaningless by some, but Carnap insisted these laws were related to experience, albeit in a suitable way.
The earlier Analytic philosophers admitted that there are statements which are a PRIORI and yet dependable, but this they said is because such statements do not really asserts anything. The predicated simply spells out something implicitly contained in the subject, as in “Bulbs have filaments”. Synthetic statements (those in which the subject does not imply the predicate) which are not testable by observation may have a certain function but they are not, strictly speaking meaningful. Thus, the general statements like being and change good or bad and other staples of widely used traditional metaphysics and ethics are, literally make no sense.
The Analytic philosophic acquired their independent identity through the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein is a difficult thinker to summaries, for much of his techniques seems to consist in shaking the reader up somewhat after the manner of a Zen masters whacks and inscrutable aphorisms. His earlier positions later modified considerably are set forth in his work. “Tractus Logico-philosophies” in the year 1922. Later on Wittgenstein concerned himself more and more with detail of ordinary language, less and less with building a formal philosophical system.
Philosophical rationale of Analytic Philosophy
Comte created a kind of attitude which regards Laws and relation as fundamental rather than physical or spiritual substance of any kind. He holds that man pass through three levels of intellectual insight (Three stages of Progress) as their thinking develops and become more refined. These stages in the order of progression are the theological the metaphysical and the positive. In the theological stage man believes in supernatural powers as the foundation of existence. In the metaphysical, the next higher stage, he believe in some substances or power as root of existence, but does not think of these as supernatural. In the third and most refined phase of development he recognizes the Laws revealed by the exact science as constituting the final and ultimate structure of things. This level of intellectual insight proposed as the highest and most refined, it should be observed, is both against supernatural, it is also no substantial.
All the existence there is, is laws or relations such as are revealed by science.
Metaphysical Position of Analytic Philosophies
The metaphysical stage is not as well defined as the theological, because its function was less definite. Infect it was a transition between the theological and the Analytics, and as such provided not far reaching beliefs nor did it determine any social structures. It was a period whose coming and going were both gradual. The attempt in the metaphysical stage to provide substantial substitutes for the belief in the supernatural cushioned the shock of the conflict between the theological and the analytical a provided an intellectual medium in which positive philosophy gradually gained the ascendance and theological philosophy gradually declined.
Again, there is no formal “analytic position” although hardcore empiricism and supernaturalism are hard to reconcile. The analysis’s seems to take their naturalism for granted as much as their empiricism.
The philosophies of Analytics focus on means rather than on ends. Their designation covers a variety of different but related positions. What is common to all of them is their concern with questions of meaning in preference of question of truth. The total concern of this group is epistemological. The analytic philosophies generally reject ontology and axiology except in so far as they were analyse statements which may be viewed as either ontological or axiological in nature.
The Analytic philosopher points out that they are not concerned with questions inside a frame of reference as in traditional philosophy, but rather with questions about the frame of reference. Many of this group of philosophers deal with this problem of the nature of the frame of reference through an analysis of language and its meanings. A.J.Ayer of example is particularly concerned with the meaning of sentences as opposed to individual work. He rejects metaphysics on the grounds that there is no basis in sense experiences for the statements of metaphysicians. “Our charge against the metaphysician is not that he attempts to employ the understanding in a field where it cannot profitably venture, but that he produces sentence can be literally significant.
Thus they are involved in a discourse about discourse. They do not stop here however. They set up a criterion of verifiability to establish whether or not a statement has significance. For them verifiability is dependent upon whether or not a statement has meaning. They conclude they if it does, it is logically possible to make observations relevant to the probability of its truth or false hood.
Alfred Jules Ayer in his book “Language, truth and logic has rightly commented” we say that a sentence is factually significant to nay given person, if, any only if, he knows who to verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true or reject it as being false. If, on the other hand, the putative proposition is of such a character that the assumption of its truth or false hood is consistent with any assumption whatsoever concerning the nature of his future experience, then, as far as he is, if not a tautology, a mere pseudo- proposition. The sentence expressing it may be emotionally significant to him, but it is not literally significant”.
Some of the Analytic philosophers go even further indicating that verifiability is nothing more than a logical lack of self contradiction. Basically, then the criteria of verifiability simply imputes meaning to statements that can be either verified or falsified. It is than can be either verified or falsified. It is this criterion that leads to the denial of metaphysics.
Since they characteristically hold that we do not know “Laws of Nature”, the distinction between natural and supernatural tends to be obliterated.
As far as the concept of permanence and change is concerned here, for that the readers were forewarned. Our categories begin to fail us. There is no analytic position on the relative claims of being and becoming except that the whole debated is sterile. Wiggins castigates identity statements (“This is a banana”) as “primitive”. It is almost impossible to determine what any given analytic writer does, indeed, believe about identity and being. Such writers when they lapse into cosmological “poetry” are usually given a Heraclitean world of pure becoming jet their analysis of ordinary propositions tends to fall completely in a commonsense framework which assumes identity with a vengeance.
Epistemological Position of Analytic Philosophies
The connotations of analytic epistemology vary from one philosopher to another. A significant divergence is found in Karl Poper, who holds that in empirical matters, a judgment must be falsifiable, but is never, in the last analysis verifiable. That is, it is always possible that something will happen which will require abandonment of an idea found tenable until then, but it is never possible that “the last fact is in” so that a proposition has passed beyond question. Popper also finds other categories of judgments besides empirical one acceptable, but holds that they have a different type of meaning.
Analytic philosophy is, then, before all else, a theory of knowledge. While some analysis today denies a bit heatedly that they are positivists, the system is certainly competent in the repudiation of metaphysics. Ryle deals with the question what knowing is by asking what it is to. Know a tune. It is not, says he, being able to tell its name, nor describing it in words, now symbolizing it in musical notation, not being able to sing it, which presupposes talent one knows the tune holds Ryly, if he recognizes it when he hears it. Carnep says that animals that had sense-organs of a type we lack might provide us with new knowledge. Ayer says it is fruitless to try to transcend the limits of possible sense-experience. In short, the theory of knowledge is empiricism knowledge begins at and never transcends the sensory level. As a rule, the analysis philosophers do not argue their empiricism. They take it for granted as part of the Zeitgeist.
Contemporary analytic philosophy differs from the classical empiricism of Hobbes, Loeke and Hume chiefly in its focus on language. Bertrand Russell himself give to analytical learning complains that the traditional analysis’s take a proposition and “worry it like a dog with a bone”. Here we encounter are important point. The linguistic analysists work with sentences, propositions, premesses, statements. They typically ask what this or that declarative sentence might “mean”. But ‘sentences’ don’t ‘mean’ things, ‘people’ means things which they try to express in sentences on way to find out what a man means is to ask him.
Logic in Analytical philosophies
-considered most exclusively, the logic of analytic philosophy, as anticipated by the foregoing discussion of its epistemology, is the logic of science. Accordingly they makes critical use of both induction and deduction and goes beyond them to a language of mathematical and near mathematical symbols in an attempts at precision and exactness in making meanings explicit.
The another important pattern of Logic which the Analytic philosophers agree is REASONING. They believe that all of life saturations are filled full of meanings, and meanings commonly have symbols by which they are communicated from one person to another. These symbols also serve a single individual in a solitary way, by providing a means by which he can effectively transfer meanings from one situation to another. Now, in coming to the solution of a problematic situation, possible solutions will oftem come to mind from similar or comparable situation, of which the present situation as through readymade for it. They must be modified and. adopted to meet the peculiar factors comprising the present situation. Even if they do happen to fit without any modification, and understanding of the relation of solution and problem will not result of the solution is applied blindly.
Axiological Position of Analytic Philosophies
Ethics in Analytic Philosophies
The analysists, like the positivists before them, stress that religion and logical deduction can not under write moral or aesthetic values. This can only be done by experience. Such concepts as beauty and goodness are urgently in need of reformulation. Values are not necessarily subjective, but they need to be brought into the sphere of the observable. Some of the concepts upon which moral judgments traditionally have depended, such as that of free will, are debunked as murdy. The analysis’s holds that the study of ethics is reducible to psychology and should act; C.L.Stevenson held that ethical terms have only emotive meanings. “Stealing is wrong” means, “The idea of stealing fills me with horror” ethics can only state that certain action usually have certain consequences one like these consequences or doesn’t.
Aesthetics in Analytic Philosophies –
The analyses use those art forms, especially literature, drama and painting, as media for communicating philosophical doctrines. The History of philosophy records no parallel of a school of thought which uses the arts as the avenue for putting their beliefs into the cultural stream of the age. It is true that Plato, St Augustine and others have produced works which are considered great literature. Also great artists such as Michelangelo, Dante, have reflected certain metaphysical beliefs in their masterpieces. But in both instances these great thinkers or artists were not attempting to be both professional artist and philosopher.
It is very feature of analytic philosophy that makes it difficult to understand, namely the use of poetic Language and other art forms express the ideas of technical philosophy. The neophyte, in his first attempt at reading the Analysis’s, is completely baffled by the terminology and the concepts. A good background in scholastic philosophy for example, seems to be of little help. It fact a student of modern literature is much more “at home” with Analysis’s philosophy than is the student of philosophy.
As far as the main characteristic of the Analytic theory of the art, First and foremost it must be noted that there are no rationalistic or empirical criteria for art. Nor can Social, political or religious norms be applied to the art forms. Art is purely subjective-it is its own master it is its own criterion, stated negatively, this view means that the artist is not bound by such criteria as Symmetry, unity, harmony or definiteness. Nor he is expected to portray the ‘Real World’, as it exists independent of his own perception of it. Also his art products need not promote socialism, democracy, religion, or a philosophy of life.
The themes of Analysis’s art are most interesting since they give live portrayal to the conditions of “existent man”. Their plays and novels depict anguish, abandonment, despair, nausea and death.
It might be worth noting that artistic expression is somehow tied in with the phenomenological method. What the Analysis artist seems to be doing is looking in upon his inner most desires and feelings and expressing these through the medium of arts.
Analytic Philosophy in Education
Analytic Philosophy has yet to be applied to question about education on a large scale; Articles are beginning to appear, however characterized more by their methodology and presupposition by consistent Pattern of conclusions.
Aim of Education-
As might be expected, the analysis’s deny that the goals of schooling can be reduced from any reduced from any mystical or rationalistic source. Some one captained that philosophy promises truth and delivers only some quibbles about its definition. Similarly, the linguist concentrate on asking us what we ‘mean’ when we talk about aims and objectives ‘ought to be’. Gotesky differentiates means, ends-in-view, anticipations, and outcomes. Perkinson argues that educational aims are hypothetical rather than categorical and that they are empirically testable when a sufficient context is supplied. Peters even holds that it is irrelevant for the teacher to have aims, since this concept does not apply to what happens in teaching, as the aims are not always in plain sight. Specific aims such as life adjustment equality, intellectual growth and mental health, have been analyse linguistically in articles, by Ballenger, Blackings ton, Broody, Cooing, Konica, Lieberman, O’Conner and others.
The Student-
The analysis’s have not had much to say yet about who is entitled to how much education and why. They have of course, suggested a mythology for resolving this and all questions, as shuffler points out. It seems probable that this methodology will lead at last to the conclusion suggested by Plato, and so often studiously ignored in the name of ‘democracy’ that each person should receive the amount and kind of schooling from which he proves able to profit.
The question that should be educated would appear to be a rather simple one for Analysis’s. One might accept him to answer that anyone who so desires should be given all the education he wants. This response is probably correct as far as education in general is concerned, since the broad meaning of education includes more than schooling. In other words, a person can educate himself in many ways such as by reading, by working, and perhaps most important, by living-by willing and acting.
However like existentialists some Analysis’s have been quite clear in advocating a culture an education for the elite. Nietzsche was very outspoken in his seorn of ‘equality of opportunity’ of all the children of all the people. He felt that public education, which attempted to educate the masses, was bound to fall short of the aim of true education simply because the masses were involved.
George Kneller does not object to universal education at least at lower level. But he does level. But he does point to the grave danger that compulsory public education might well engulf the individual in the sea of complete, depersonalized anonymity. Also the ‘compulsory’ aspect of public education seems to cause him concern since it removes completely the individual’s freedom of choice in education matters.
Role of Teacher-
The goal of education for an analytic philosopher is making individual aware of the meaning of homeless, of being at home, and of the ways of returning. In the strict sense the teacher is concerned principally with open ended education. Freedom to his students from his isolation and his anonymity, freeing him seeing his situations and powers. So much so that the role of teacher seems similar with psychiatric therapy. No educationist today is more concerned with education in this sense than an Analysis teacher. Every analysis philosopher is a doctor and its missionary… for the purpose of encouraging individuals of all kinds and conditions to understand their situations and themselves. And it is the starting pint of every analysis’s that no other modern philosophy has taken the self i.e. the student and its situation seriously enough to make the saturation the subject matter of its inquiry. All analysis’s star with the individual who chooses his course and who dies in disquietude. And all of them protect against the forces within man and his contemporary situation that discourage him from being at home, or, worse from seeing himself as both mortal and responsible.
According to analysis the teacher shows by his example that education is a concentration on personal freedom-one which encourages the student to accept the facts and beliefs which have relevance for him. Nietzsche for criticizing the role of teacher in relation to traditional method (historic-scholastic method) of teaching of mother tongue:
People deal with it as if it were a dead Language and as if the present and the future were under no obligation to it what so ever. The historical method had become so universal in our time that even the living body of language is sacrificed for the sake of anatomical study…The historical method may certainly be a considerable easier and more comfortable one for the teacher; it also seems to be compatible with a smaller display of energy and will a part. But we shall find that this observation hold good in every department Pedagogical life.
With equal Force Nietzsche criticizes the teaching of German Composition in the Public schools.
Owing to the very fact in this department it is an almost always the most gifted Pupils who display the greatest eagerness, it ought to have been made clear how dangerously stimulating, precisely here, the task of the teacher must be. German composition makes an appeal to the individual and the more strongly a pupil is conscious of his various qualities, the more personally will he do his German composition.
Nietzsche than goes on to tell what the typical teacher in the public school does with the pupil’s first attempt at expressing his individuality in composition.
What does he (The Teacher) hold most reprehensible in this class of work? What does he call pail’s attention to? To all excesses in form or characteristics of the individual…in short, their individuality is reproved a rejected by the teacher in favour of an unoriginal decent average. On the other hand, uniform mediocrity gets peevish Praise.
The Curriculum
Scattered efforts have been made Henderson has discerned diverse meaning of ‘subject-matter’ and proposed a classification system. Mc.-Clellan has claimed deficiencies in the concepts of knowledge in major curriculum theories. Parkinson and several other authors have questioned certain ambiguities in ‘needs’ as related to the curriculum. R.G.Jones has tried to show how a theory of philosophical analysis and a concept of unity can serve as a basis for liberal education. Nordberg has asked weather a curriculum is a Kilpatrick suggested “experience” Again however the bulk of the possibilities has not been developed. There are many equivocations and obscurities enveloped in the motion of subject curricular integration teaching units and the like.
Based on three of progress Comte’s concepts of curriculum is quite interesting comet was deeply enmeshed in the sciences he regarded mathematics as the basis of all sciences. The whole range of scientific discipline he broke down into six distinct sciences (Inorganic Science, astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Sociology). The first four of these he grouped together as dealing with the organic. The order in which they are listed indicates a dependence between the sciences for example sociology the last named and in many ways the most significant Science for comet cannot be fully understand unless the student knows physiology depends on knowledge of Chemistry, chemistry depends on Physics, and so back work n regression.
Instructional Methodology –
Problems about instructional methodology have also been tackled by the analytic philosophers. Boxberger distinguished a performance sense of explaining from a text book sense. Brown has argued that a student can learn testing should concern both. Green has distinguished among a family intelligent performance. Of course some of those who in effect make linguistic analysis of educational problems do not accept the basic premises of Analytic philosophy.
Since the resolution of semantic differences is itself a method. One may presume that the analyst would recommend it to the classroom teacher. For example the elementary teacher whose charges readily understand the assignment? “Write a story with 500 words” might stimulate thought by asking them “What is a word?” Like most notions which seem plain and uncomplicated, this one dissolves into mistakes of obscurity at some point. Is a word a sound which means something? It so then why is not a scream a word, since it warns of danger? Also what about written language? It a word is a constituent part of a sentence, then why is not a subject together with an appositive (“Ram, my best friend”) a word. What about the “word from our sponsor” that lasts for five minutes.
Agencies of Education-
The analysts have done little work on this aspect of education. There is enough room for some. For example, if the right of the state to conduct schools be asserted, who for this purpose is the state? Do we means bye this the something’s as if we assert the right of the government to conduct schools? Again what determines whether a school is religious minority school? Is clerical control essential, or is the official purpose of the institution definitive? Still again we have not always distinguished between the obligation of church to teach and her obligation to conduct schools and colleges. The first pertains to her essence; the second depends upon circumstances. In some situations, the church could accomplish her educational responsibilities through state schools or perhaps even though some medium which human imagination has not yet conceived.
Critical Appraisal of Analytic Philosophy
In so far as the aim of linguist is simply clearly, it is difficult not to be sympathetic unfortunately, linguistic analysis as a school of thought has been historically intertwined with logical positivism, so that those who might like to by the former without the latter are nonplussed. It is to be hoped that a sophisticated system of linguistic analysis can be unfolded which is metaphysically noncommittal. By the same token, there should not be an advance commitment to radical emporium. In short language analysis as it has been practiced almost always begs the question. To philosophize is to discover one’s intimate assumptions, revise them and, where necessary into the interest of overall consistency, revise them. But the typical analytic philosopher has made his imperial and anti-metaphysical assumptions before the ‘game’ begins, what he calls philosoing is just the applications of these assumptions. Whitehead said that the philosophy of an age consists not in what its lading thinkers say or even what they ask, but in what they consider too obvious to wonder about. Empiricism seems to occupy that status today. Never the less, if the analytic philosophers can rid educational literature and rhetoric of the opaque, the vague, the obscure, the ambiguous, they will have done a majestic service.
It is too early for an objective and complete appraisal of this system of thought. It seems clear, however, that we are in its debt for providing sharpen, more explicit definition of Lazy concept, since educators, like politicians, preachers and advertising men, seem especially vulnerable to works cut loose from their moorings, we in Education should subject ourselves too much of this discipline. On the negative side it is equally clear that history will ensure the linguistic analysis’s for a patronizing and high handed stance toward all other thinkers. If we are to believe them the famous philosophers Prior to Carnep or Wittgenstein were badly deluded men. The average men thought more clearly than kant, Aquinas, Schopen harer and thus avoided become a philosopher.