Browsing by Subject "analytic"
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Item An Empirical Survey of the Analytic / Continental Divide(Texas Digital Library, 2023-05-16) Barta, WalterWhat is the difference, if any, between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy? Contemporary philosophers tend to identify themselves, and so contemporary philosophy is divided, roughly along these lines. Thus, two fields of discourse, the analytic and the continental, have emerged. But is this division substantive or rhetorical? Is it helpful or harmful? What are its effects inside and outside the discipline? Can these categories be concretely defined, or are they nebulous and provisional? Some metaphilosophers, like C. G. Prado, in A House Divided, have suggested that analytic philosophy and continental philosophy are distinguishable based on respective focuses, and that the divide falls along lines, such as these: problem solving versus political engagement, philosophical analysis versus synthesis (e.g. a genealogical orientation), bottom-up versus top-down approaches to disciplinary hierarchy. Others have suggested that the analytic/continental divide is erroneous, illusory, merely rhetorical, or simply nonexistent. Each of these constitutes a claim that is empirically testable against the fields of discourse of the two (sub)disciplines through a comparison of textual data: the presence of logically valent as opposed to politically valent words, manner of reference to historical figures, and distribution of textual citations. Inasmuch as these correspond to quantifiable metrics, each of the aforementioned questions may have a discrete and demonstrable empirical answer. The use of empirical and statistical surveys in philosophy is unusual, but its recent implementation by David Chalmers (as in his recent “What do Philosophers Believe?”) and other influential philosophers has proven its ability to develop important insights.