A Companion to Analytic Philosophy (review)

Volumes in the Companion series are intended to provide sophisticated surveys of the state of the art in various fields of philosophy, material that is accessible to students. This volume fulfills this mandate with an unusual mode of organization. While analytic philosophy was originally conceptualized as responding to a series of isolated "puzzles" that called for individual solutions in fairly local theories, following a vaguely defined methodology of "analysis," more recently it has been acknowledged that some analytic philosophers have indeed developed philosophical systems that cover a range of phenomena. So perhaps one would expect this survey to be a history of problems with sketches of a few philosophical systems.

Martinich and Sosa have discovered that one can provide a complete overview of the accomplishments of twentieth-century analytic philosophy organized simply by philosopher, listed by date of birth. It turns out that individual problems can be identified with particular philosophers who made them their own. Some philosophers have developed systems but even these are presented as single axiomatic doctrines such as "naturalism," that lead to a number of solutions to different problems. This survey of the views with only the barest of biographical details ends up providing a comprehensive survey of the prominent problems and theories of analytic philosophers.

Forty-one philosophers are included: Frege, Russell, Moore, Broad, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Popper, Ryle, then Tarski, Church and Goedel sharing one essay, Ramsey, Hempel, Goodman, Hart, Stevenson, Quine, Ayer, Austin, Malcolm, Sellars, Grice, von Wright, Chisholm, Davidson, Anscombe, Hare, Strawson, Foot, Marcus, Rawls, Kuhn, Dummett, Putnam, Armstrong, Chomsky, Rorty, Searle, Fodor, Kripke, and Lewis. There is no need to organize them by field such as Ethics, and Philosophy of Language, etc., or school, such as Logical Positivism or Ordinary Language Philosophy, and so on. It will not be difficult to find the appropriate essay to research a particular problem. For Cartesian doubt about the external world look to Ernest Sosa on Moore. For sense data and the adverbial account of sensation look to James van Cleve on Broad. For explanation it is Philip Kitcher on Hempel; for views in ethics it is obvious whether to go to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on Hare, James Dreier on Stevenson, or Gavin Lawrence on Foot. Likewise one can follow the historical development of the subject, and even its "schools," by simply following the chronology imposed by birth dates. Analytic philosophy progressed through a series of generations of like-minded philosophers.

The organization of this volume invites speculation about analytic philosophy as a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon that is perhaps waning. With Hare and Lewis deceased since the publication, only fourteen of the forty-one philosophers are alive, with only two under the age of seventy. Some of the articles suggest that such and such is an "open problem" or that their subject has started a tradition that is carried on by some distinguished younger philosophers, but by and large the tone is one of completed work with definitive views. Some authors, especially W. H. Newton-Smith on Popper and Avrum Stroll on Ryle, concentrate on why their subject's views are not accepted or no longer in fashion. Thomas Baldwin takes the unfortunately common view of Russell as wrong on most issues and frustratingly confused on many details that Frege got straight. Generally, however, the articles are laudatory, presenting what look like finished views in a very concise but accurate fashion, suggesting that analytic philosophy was successful in aiming to make progress through careful and sometimes piecemeal analysis.

The essays are of a uniformly high quality, some even gems of exposition, and of a uniform style, sticking to discussion of issues and views at a common level of detail and largely avoiding biographical or social context. Exceptions to the complete lack of biography are Searle's entry on Austin, which portrays the spirit of the ordinary language school...