Analytic Philosophy’s Chess Paradigm

Analytic Philosophy has thus a double function: it provides quiet green pastures for intellectual analysis, wherein its practitioners can find refuge from a troubled world and cultivate their intellectual games with chess-like indifference to its course; and it is also a keen, shining sword helping to dispel irrational beliefs and to make evident the structure of ideas

Ernest Nagel, “Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy in Europe” (1936)

I pass, finally, to the remaining Part of the Ethics, which concerns the means, or way, leading to Freedom. Here, then, I shall treat of the power of reason, showing what it can do against the affects, and what Freedom of Mind, or blessedness, is. From this we shall see how much more the wise man can do than the ignorant. But it does not pertain to this investigation to show how the intellect must be perfected, or in what way the Body must be cared for, so that it can perform its function properly. The former is the concern of Logic, and the latter of Medicine

Spinoza, Ethics 5 Preface

Following in the spirit of Nagel’s “impressions” of analytic philosophy, let me begin with an impression I have long had about analytic philosophy—put simply, the hierarchical ladder of success for analytic philosophers seems to favor those who are good puzzle solvers, or more precisely those who were or are mathematical and/or chess prodigies who have turned their sights to doing philosophy instead. As an impression I am making no solid claims to the accuracy of my observation, but I decided to write this blog post after having recently read (admittedly late to it) Liam Kofi Bright’s blog post where he claims analytic philosophy is a degenerating research programme. This also brought to mind a number of blog posts from the NewAPPS days with Eric Schliesser (here, here, and here). With these caveats, I’ll throw out a few comments as to why I agree that analytic philosophy was destined to degenerate from the start, and precisely because it sought, as Nagel approvingly observed, “find refuge from a troubled world and cultivate their intellectual games with chess-like indifference to its course…”

I find the chess analogy that Nagel uses to be extremely appropriate for capturing the sense and motivation of a lot of the practices one finds among analytic philosophers. When one reads their work, one finds oneself entering into their argumentative game, where they anticipate three or four moves ahead all the potential counter-arguments, preparing in advance to defend those moves. At conferences and in written work there is always the potential for, perhaps even the hope for, the “gotcha” question, the slam dunk argument that essentially checkmates their opponent. As Spinoza observed in one of the quotes that heads this post, there is nothing wrong with developing one’s logical skills, and the formal methods that are common in analytic philosophy do demand a rigor that has come to be identified with the nature of rationality itself. It was for this reason that Nagel saw analytic philosophy as “a keen, shining sword helping to dispel irrational beliefs.” The problem with analytic philosophy arises when logic and formal methods becomes an end in itself rather than a means of maintaining intellectual fitness, as Spinoza understands its proper role.

When analytic philosophy becomes the pursuit of formal methods, and a pursuit carried out with “chess-like indifference,” then it detaches our capacity to think critically and engage with the world, and in this detachment undermines our very ability to understand the very history that accounts for how we got to where we are in the world. Rather than engaging with the troubled world, much of analytic philosophy, with some notable exceptions, continues to do just what Nagel admired about it—namely, it seeks “a refuge from a troubled world.” Whether or not this shift away from a troubled world was motivated, within the Anglo-American academy at least, by fears of communism in the post WWII era (as McCumber argues), the result has been an outright indifference to history of philosophy, if not a demonizing of historicism and of the continental philosophers who engage in such practices. Now as the troubled world has become more troubled and people are wanting to think about and understand issues regarding race, economic inequality, the tendencies towards autocracy and the undermining of democracy, analytic philosophy has found that it does not have much to say, again with some notable exceptions (Liam Bright and Jason Stanley for instance).

Where do we go from here? Do we part ways with analytic philosophy? No. If we think of the formal tools of analytic philosophy as just that, as tools, then I think analytic philosophy has an important place within a pluralist approach to philosophy (as has been attempted here). Such an approach will draw from the intellectual resources available to address the problems of our “troubled world,” and sometimes, yes, this will entail perfecting our formal tools. Most importantly I feel that what most needs to change is the “gotcha,” checkmate mentality of philosophy as an “intellectual game,” where puzzle-solving prodigies emerge as the stars of the discipline. This competitive, winner-takes-all approach to philosophy simply perpetuates the socio-economic structures we are all immersed in and that need to be thoughtfully challenged and (hopefully) transformed. If Liam Bright is right and analytic philosophy is nearing its end, or at least the end of its hegemonic status, then this is not something to be grieved.