Analytical Philosophy

[More Fire for the People]

I am learning a bit about analytical philosophy; I have also read portions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But I have noticed there is a certain reaction against analytical philosophy within Marxist circles but this is probably do to analytical philosophy anti-dialecitcs: law of excluded middle [B(A) ∨ ¬B(A)].

For those who favour dialectics, the more naturalistic worldview, what do you think analytical philosophy, the more mathematical worldview, offers to Marxism?

And for the anti-dialecticians, what do you think of Wittgenstein’s ‘language-game’?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

HA:

Well since dialecticians get the alleged 'law of excluded middle' wrong, there is no clash (any more than there would be a clash between the ideas of someone who thought, say, that the 'negation of the negation' was a pub in Antarctica, and dialectics itself).

With such confuson there can be no clash, only bemused incredulity.

So, analytic philosophy (even if it relied on this alleged law, which it does not -- only some areas of it do) need have no worries about challenges arising from the logically-challenged shores of dialectical confusion.

For example, your 'definition' of this law is vague (check out Peter Geach's article on this 'law' in his book 'Logic Matters').

As to W's 'language game' analogy, it is the least interesting of his ideas (but it is the one that most people remember because it is so easy).