Similarly, G.E. Moore, in a celebrated section of his Principia Ethica (1903), tried to show that statements like “This is good” are sui generis and cannot be reduced to statements of either natural or metaphysical fact; the Idealist belief that ethics ultimately depends on metaphysics rested on a delusion. Moore perhaps failed to see the force of the Idealist challenge to the individualist assumptions on which much ethical thinking proceeds, and he did not note that, in one respect at least, ethical results can be dependent on those of metaphysics: if metaphysics shows that the world is other than it is initially taken to be, conclusions about what to do must be altered accordingly. Again, the reaction among logicians to Hegelian attempts to merge logic into metaphysics certainly went too far. There is a genuine philosophical problem about the relation between the world of logic and the world of fact, and it cannot be solved by simply repeating that logic is an autonomous discipline whose principles deserve respect in themselves. None of this, however, shows that metaphysics is the fundamental philosophical discipline, the branch of philosophy that has the last word about what goes on in all other parts of the subject.
G.E. Moore, detail of a pencil drawing by Sir William Orpen; in the National Portrait Gallery, LondonCourtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
Metaphysics and analysis
Modern British and American philosophers commonly describe themselves as engaged in philosophical analysis, as opposed to metaphysics. The interests of a metaphysician, according to this view, are predominantly speculative; he wants to reveal hitherto unknown facts about the world and on that basis to construct a theory about the world as a whole. In so doing he is necessarily engaged in activities that rival those of the scientist, with the important difference that scientific theories can be brought to the test of experience, whereas metaphysical theories cannot. Eschewing this conception of philosophy as impossible, the critic of metaphysics believes that philosophy should confine itself to the analysis of concepts, which is a strictly second-order activity independent of science and which need involve no metaphysical commitment.
The notion of analysis in philosophy is far from clear. Analysis on any account is meant to result in clarification, but it is not evident how this result is to be achieved. For some, analysis involves the substitution for the concept under examination of some other concept that is recognizably like it (as Gilbert Ryle, an English Analyst, elucidated the concept of mind by replacing it with the notion of “a person behaving”); for others, analysis involves the substitution of synonym for synonym. If the latter understanding of analysis is required, as in Moore’s classic example of the analysis of brother as male sibling, not much enlightenment is likely to ensue. If, however, the philosopher is permitted to engage in what is sometimes pejoratively described as “reductive analysis,” he will produce interest at the cost of reintroducing speculation. Ryle’s Concept of Mind (1949) is a challenging book just because it advances a thesis of real metaphysical importance—that one can say everything one needs to say about minds without postulating mental substance.
A further aspect of the situation that deserves mention is this. If it is the case, as is often claimed, that analysis can be practiced properly only when the analyst has no metaphysical presuppositions, by what means does he select concepts for analysis? Would it not be appropriate for him, in these circumstances, to take any concept of reasonable generality as a suitable subject on which to practice his art? It turns out, in fact, however, that the range of concepts commonly recognized as philosophical is more limited than that, and that those concepts to which Analytic philosophers give their attention are chosen because of their wider philosophical bearings. Thus, recent philosophers have paid particular attention to the concept of knowledge not just because it is a notion whose analysis has long proved difficult but also because on one account at least it involves an immediately experienced mental act—something that many Analysts would like to proscribe as mythical. Similarly, the celebrated analysis of the idea of causality put forward by David Hume was not undertaken out of idle curiosity but with a wider purpose in mind: to undermine both the Aristotelian and the Cartesian views of the world and to substitute for them an atomism of immediate appearances in which all objects were “loose and separate”—that is, logically independent one of another. The insight into the constitution of nature promised in different ways by Aristotle and Descartes was an illusion, the truth being that scientific advance serves only to “stave off our ignorance a little.” What Hume said about causation connects internally with his views about what exists. Despite his polemic against books of “divinity and school metaphysics,” he had a metaphysics of his own to recommend.
The truth is that metaphysics and analysis are not separate in the way modern Analytic philosophers pretend. The speculative philosophers of the past were certainly not averse to analysis: witness the splendid discussion of the concept of knowledge in Plato’s Theaetetus, or, for a more recent example, Bradley’s account of the meanings of “self.” The legend that a metaphysical philosopher has his eye so firmly set on higher things that he is entirely careless of the conceptual structure he seeks to recommend is absolutely without foundation. A metaphysical philosopher is a philosopher after alclass="underline" argument and the passion for clarification are in his blood. Although some contemporary philosophers profess to undertake analysis entirely for its own sake and without explicit metaphysical motivation, it may be doubted if their claim is capable of being sustained. The “logical analysis” practiced by Russell in the early part of the 20th century was not metaphysically neutral, nor was the analysis of the Logical Positivists, who recommended a strongly scientific view of the world. Some current analytic work is motivated less by the desire to forward an overall theory than by a wish to destroy a prevailing or previously held theory that is considered objectionable. To seek to overthrow a metaphysical theory, however, is itself to engage in metaphysics—not very interesting metaphysics, perhaps, but metaphysics all the same.