II THE METHODOLOGY OF THE ANALYTIC TRADITION

The analytic tradition in philosophy, like the existential tradition, is made up of philosophers whose basic outlook may differ from one another but who all subscribe to certain basic common ideas about philosophy. The first of these is that the function of philosophy is critical and therefore what one does when one philosophizes is to analyse in order to make some judgment of validity. The second is that philosophy is primarily concerned with analysing propositions or statements. Now these statements or propositions can and must be analysed in two ways; first as to whether or not they follow strict logical rules and second as to whether or not the language used in the statements follows the rules of grammar. It is the contention of the analytic philosophers that practically all the mistakes made in reflective thinking are due to the fact that either the basic rules of logic or the basic rules of language were improperly applied.(3)

The rules of logic that the analytic philosopher is interested in may be explained as follows. A basic paradigm of logic is: If A, then B; A, therefore B. Since the paradigm is always true, the only mistake we can make is in the statement or proposition that replaces 'If A, then B'. Now an analysis of the kinds of statements that are capable of verification and therefore able to fit into such a paradigm, show themselves to be two; an analytic proposition or a synthetic proposition. Analytic propositions are those which are shown to be true by an analysis of the terms A and B, because in our analysis we see that B is contained in A and therefore it is perfectly obvious that whenever we have A we will also have B. Now the limitation of this kind of a proposition is that while it can tell us something that was not clear to us before, it does not tell us anything that is new. In fact as our analysis becomes clearer we see that such a proposition is merely a tautology and its only function is to remind us that there is an intrinsic relationship between terms A and B. Synthetic propositions, on the other hand, are those in which terms A and B have no intrinsic connection and therefore their truth status can be verified only by experience. While on the one hand this makes these propositions more difficult to verify, on the other hand it also means that they are giving us factual knowledge because they are grounded in immediate conscious experience and not simply in a linguistic connection.(4)

Once we understand these basic rules of logic, we are much less likely to make the mistake of thinking we are demonstrating something factual when actually we are only demonstrating an intrinsic connection between definitions of words. However, this has only been part of the problem in reflective thinking. The rest of the problem has been the mistakes that are made in attempting to distinguish real synthetic propositions from supposed ones. How do we make such a mistake? Because of faulty grammar. Take the statement "The dog is in the yard." This we recognize as a synthetic statement by virtue of the fact that there is no intrinsic connection between the dog and what we predicate of it, namely being in the yard. But is it a real synthetic statement? To find out, we must subject it to our immediate conscious experience. Thus by simply looking we can see whether the dog is in the yard. Perhaps the dog is not now in the yard but just the fact that this statement was capable of. being verified lets us know that it is a real synthetic statement. There are many occasions when I am not able to verify propositions directly by my immediate conscious experience such as those concerning past events and those concerning happenings in other parts of the world. But I can recognize these as real synthetic statements by virtue of the fact that they are either potentially verifiable by my immediate conscious experience or that they lead to other propositions that are verifiable by my immediate conscious experience. But take the proposition 'God is in heaven'. Now this looks like the proposition 'The dog is in the yard', and so because it seems to have the same grammatical construction one might think that this is a real synthetic proposition. But in actual fact there is no experience that in the case of this proposition would seem even remotely relevant to the question of its truth or falsity. And what is not capable of being judged experientially true or false is not meaingful in the context of the real world.(5) Therefore, the problem with traditional religious statements has been this lack of real synthetic content because of a faulty use of substantives without reference to empirical reality.

3)Cf. A. J. Ayer, LANGUAGE TRUTH & LOGIC (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1955), pp. 46-59.

4)Cf. Frederick Ferre, LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND GOD (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd, 1962), pp. 8-23.