KANT AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Roberthannapresents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic tradi- tions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the relation between them. The rise of analytic philosophy decisively marked the end of the hundred-year dominance of Kant’s philosophy in Europe. But Hanna shows that the analytic tradition also emerged from Kant’s philosophy in the sense that its members were able to define and legitimate their ideas only by means of an intensive, extended engagement with, and a partial or complete rejection of, the Critical Philosophy. Hanna’s book therefore comprises both an interpretative study of Kant’s massive and seminal Critique of Pure Reason, and a critical essay on the historical foundations of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine. Hanna considers Kant’s key doctrines in the Critiquein the light of their reception and transmission by the leading figures of the analytic tradition—Frege, Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Quine. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna’s original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new ‘cognitive-semantic’ interpreta- tion of transcendental idealism, and a vigorous defence of Kant’s theory of analytic and synthetic necessary truth. These will make Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy compelling reading not just for specialists in the history of philosophy, but for all who are interested in these fundamental philosophical issues. This page intentionally left blank Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy ROBERT HANNA CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 2001 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Robert Hanna 2001 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2001 First published in paperback 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organisation. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hanna, Robert. Kant and the foundations of analytic philosophy / Robert Hanna. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Analysis (Philosophy). 2. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 3. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804—Influence. I. Title. B808.5.H35 2001 142′.3—dc21 00–060632 ISBN 0–19–825072–X (hbk.) ISBN 0–19–927204–2 (pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Graphicraft Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk To MTH and ETH The fundamental things apply, as time goes by This page intentionally left blank PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Since the late 1980s I have been deeply interested in the connections between Kant’s Critique of Pure Reasonand the historical foundations of analytic philo- sophy. What struck me like a slap in the face back then, just as now, is how the leading figures of the analytic tradition from the 1880s up through the 1950s and 1960s—Frege, Moore, Russell, and early Wittgenstein; Carnap and the Vienna Circle; later Wittgenstein and the ordinary-language philosophers; and Quine—quite self-consciously rejected the main doctrines of the first Critiqueand yet also quite unconsciously absorbed Kant’s way of formulating the very distinctions and problems they were dealing with. Shining examples are the familiar and perhaps all-too-familiar dichotomies between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori, rationalism and empiricism, pure logic and empirical psychology, logicism and intuitionism, realism and idealism, and so on. Where would analytic philosophy be without these enabling con- trasts and worries? In this sense, the analytic tradition is the reversed image of the first Critique. In 1991 or thereabouts I read Alberto Coffa’s important book, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. Coffa’s thesis is that the sort of philosophical semantics practised by Carnap and the other members of the Vienna Circle was the direct result of a long and subtle dialectical engagement with Kant’s theory of the a priori. That, of course, was grist for my mill: it seemed to be only an instance of a more general fact. It also so happened that at the same time I was working my way through Stephen Schiffer’s equally important book, Remnants of Meaning. Schiffer raises a very disturbing question—namely, what if the semantic project that lies at the heart of recent and contemporary analytic philosophy is in fact incoherent and impossible? As I read Coffa’s book in parallel with Schiffer’s, I gradually realized that our late-twentieth-century sense of the obvious wrongness of Kant’s views on the crucial analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions, and on all the others too, was based on a certain conventional understanding of the first principles of analytic philo- sophy. But if Schiffer is correct, then that conventional understanding is itself, at the very least, not obviouslyright. This in turn led me to the thought that, although Kant’s doctrines had been officially trounced, they had not actually been refuted in any decisive way—not by a long shot. For these reasons, it seemed to me that a reconsideration of the connection between Kant’s first Critique and the historical foundations of analytic philosophy from Frege to viii Preface and Acknowledgements Quine could usefully illuminate both Kant’s theoretical philosophy and some topics of central contemporary concern. Hence, after a suitable period of time had elapsed, this book. And while I am in the confessional mode, one other prefatory comment. Everyone has heard the equally wicked and witty remark, usually attributed to Quine, that there are two kinds of philosophers—those who are interested in the history of philosophy and those who are interested in philosophy. Part of my motivation for undertaking this project was to show how thoroughly that remark and the attitude it expresses misrepresent the real nature of our subject. For example: it is now clear that analytic philosophy as it was prac- tised in 1950—the year of the first public presentation of ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’—was in large part the result of working out to the bitter end a bold project initiated by Frege in the 1880s. But things might have gone very differently after 1950 if Frege’s project had, in 1950, been placed in a broader historical perspective. I mean to say that we cannot do philosophy in the pre- sent without implicitly adopting an understanding of philosophy’s past and also that we cannot properly do philosophy in the present without making this implicit historical understanding explicit—that is, without critically examining the intellectual origins and genesis we normally take for granted. So one might then say that there are two kinds of philosophers: those who are interested in the history of philosophy and those who should be. Writing books is usually a solitary occupation, but philosophy is always a social activity; thus I have been helped by many people. I would particu- larly like to thank Paul Guyer, Christopher Shields, and Sir Peter F. Strawson for their comments on versions of Chapter 3; Mark Balaguer for his com- ments on a version of Chapter 4; and Alex Oliver for comments on a version of Chapter 5. Many thanks, too, are hereby directed to George Bealer, Jerrold Katz, Patricia Kitcher, Michael Potter, Peter Railton, and Christopher Shields for (for me anyhow) fog-lifting conversations about various aspects of the project. My editors at OUP, Peter Momtchiloff, Charlotte Jenkins, and Hilary Walford, have been unfailingly helpful, efficient, and pleasant throughout the several stages of the process of getting my manuscript into decent shape and then into print. Above all, however, I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Paul Guyer and Peter Strawson for their long-standing support of the very idea of this project. Many undergraduate and graduate students participated in various versions of a repeating cycle of three seminars—on Kant’s first Critique, on the semantics and epistemology of necessary truth, and on the historical foun- dations of analytic philosophy—that I ran at the University of Colorado at Boulder, at York University, and then back at Boulder again, from 1992 to 1999. Their intelligent comments and questions were a constant source of good ideas; and their appropriately directed expressions of bemusement and scepticism provided the perfect system of critical checks and balances. Thanks to you all. In a similar vein, I would like to thank audiences at the Preface and Acknowledgements ix University of Wyoming, University of British Columbia, York University, and Bowling Green State University, and also members of the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, the North American Kant Society, and the UK Kant Society, for their comments on presentations of bits and pieces of this and closely related material. I have also been aided by institutions. The Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder granted me release time from teach- ing during the Spring term of 1993, making it possible to compose the ear- liest drafts of Chapters 3–5. And both the University of Colorado and York University generously gave me travel money to test drive some of my ideas. My indebtedness to my wife, Martha Hanna, and to our daughter, Beth, is of a different although ultimately more important nature. The quotation on the Dedication page is taken from the song ‘As Time Goes By’. It was written by the little-known philosopher Herman Hupfeld, but—as everyone knows— memorably performed by Dooley Wilson in that most sentimental and wonderful of all old movies, Casablanca. R. H. 1 January 2000 Boulder, Colorado