Analytic Philosophy, an Interactive Kind: A User Manual (Warning: May Not Work)

Abstract

I argue that analytic (AP) and continental (CP) philosophy are best understood as social classification categories that structure social practices (such as identification, institutional decision-making, and the formation of academic norms). These practices, in turn, feed back into and reshape the classifications themselves. Examples include the loosening of the boundaries between AP and CP, moves toward epistemic decolonization, and the increasing thematic diversity of AP. I further argue that we should pursue conceptual engineering with an ameliorative aim, rather than a conceptual analysis of AP along the familiar lines of the standard debate — definition, ties of historical influence, family resemblance. I propose two models. On the classification-first model, the question "What is AP?" is reinterpreted as "For what social purposes do we use the label 'AP'?". On the metaphilosophy-first model, AP is not treated as a fixed package of methods and normative ideals, but as an ongoing debate about methods and ideals. In the empirical part of the paper, I offer a synthetic review of existing quantitative studies and argue that (1) AP is more argumentative than CP; (2) CP is not more fragmented or heterogeneous than AP; and (3) most work in AP is done without logic. In the survey part, I classify positions in the standard debate as descriptive essentialism, normative essentialism, historical-sociological deflationism, and family-resemblance deflationism. I also discuss AP-supremacism, revisionism, and views of AP as a political project, as normal science, as an illusion, and as a psychoanalytic imaginary.