A lot of excellent points here. Although I personally am not a fan of how analytic philosophy seems to bracket out the pure fact away from the manner in which the phenomenon is actually occurring in the world (i.e., I doubt analytic propositions would do much good in describing purely qualitative concepts like the gruesomeness of the event, etc.), I appreciate the necessity of having clear distinctions and categories in place for practicalities such as policymaking and other such endeavors. I'm reminded of a movie I watched by Jesse Eisenberg a few days ago where one of the protagonists chastizes a tour guide during a Holocaust memorial tour for focusing too much on the stats, numbers, and definitions at the expense of "the experience of the people and their memory" and "being in the moment." True enough, if my readings of analytic philosophy were anything to go by, the whole thing seems rather robotic and detached--like the Manhattan Project had more emotions in their formulae than the Vienna Circle did. Any ideas of where I could be proven wrong?
As I understand it, Anscombe's protest fell on deaf ears (at least at the time), and was mostly panned. The problem is not so much that we do not realize Truman is a mass murderer. The problem is we have engendered a culture that tolerates mass murder. The US hasn't done many favors in making the world think otherwise as of now. It is no longer enough to show that mass murder was committed; meaningful discourse to make lasting impact cannot just clarify, but needs to enforce some meaningful change in attitudes.
I wonder where analytic philosophy goes now with that in mind. Although I don't doubt that you've probably only shown only around 8% of its power, I'm not sure there is anything in the analytic repertoire of normative ethics (as I understand) to convince the average person that mass murder is inherently untolerable. No amount of marginal utility, hedons, maxims, etc. can do that. (God forbid, you just intuit that it is wrong, which veers a little to close to my camp, no?) As you are probably aware as a student of phenomenology, some facts and existents in the world cannot be known nor intuited, but rather they must be felt. Many a jingoist has had their stomachs churn and their hearts broken by a visit to either one of the atomic bomb museums, or a cursory viewing of Barefoot Gen or Grave of the Fireflies. I still cannot watch the latter without crying.
P.S.
Just to avoid confusion--Anscombe's position is not the normative Catholic position. The Vatican has condemned and prohibited the use of nuclear armaments since their inception, and they advocate a categorical pacifisim.
Firstly, I completely agree that analytic philosophy certainly has its limits. I agree with you that its limits are the affect, the gut-punch, the phenomena as it is, which cannot fully be captured at all, but less so by the dry philosophizing of analysis. However, it is useful to combat those who irrationally excuse war crimes. Continental philosophy has an opposite tendency to promote vagueness, and thereby make it prone to abuse by authoritarian leaders, fascism, etc.
Second, analytic philosophy is useful because people think that they have a rational view--that they are not committing mass murder. Especially in the West, a lot of sophistry goes on in politics to make a nation's actions seem rational. That's where analytic philosophy, like Anscombe, can slice through the BS. I think that in addition, people have become cold to reality, but at least the veneer of rationality is pulled back.
I think continental and analytic philosophy are important, but again, I agree with you as you say that most people don't heed philosophy at all, analytic or otherwise. That's why museums, works of art, myths, movies, memoirs, etc., are so essential.
Also... The Catholic Church is not pacifist. Not at all--they affirm something like Augustinian just war theory, like Anscombe... Am I wrong?
Totally on board with your take that it useful to combat those who *irrationally* excuse war crimes. In that sense, analytic philosophers are kind of like a secret police who have specialized methods of eliminating specialized targets. I totally get that. But unlike you, the vast majority of analytic philosophers I've met do not recognize their limitations. Over reliance on the ostensible pure factuality of what they preach ends up leading to a slippery slope of some kind of intellectual hegemony. It comes off as something along the lines of a neo-scientism, or to use one of Derrida's terms, a logocentrism. I firmly believe that both spheres of philosophy ought to function as mutual checks and balances of sorts, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for figures on both sides that try to extend an olive branch (such as Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Graham Priest, Markus Gabriel, Hubert Dreyfus, etc.).
The idea that not committing mass murder is an inherently rational view does not seem satisfactory. The rationaltiy of this seems contingent on some kind of a priori intuition that I feel necessitates some degree of proof and further investigation. Bear in mind that I am not quesitoning it's moral reprehensibility, but its intrinsic rationality. A good philosophy can definitely still cling to a priori intuitions, but they must be levied with a proportional degree of skepticism in my opinion. This includes the concept of rationality itself. Moreover, I think good philosophy does not necessarily need to be rational. A hot take, but the scope of rationality is nebulous, as I'm sure you know. Prima facie there is nothing rational about Trinitarian theology or most other fiedistic doctrines, but nevertheless they are often worth exploring and upholding.
Also, Catholics do tend to cling stubbornly towards different flavors of Just War. That much is true. But atomic weapons violate certain conditions of Just War that render them categorically wrong. Namely, these are distinction (i.e., non-combatants are targeted) and proportionality (self-explanatory; basically, no overkill). I realize that making such distinctions smells very analytic, and I am aware of that. The Cathetcism of the Catholic Church, which is the compendium of most of their salient teachings, however would imply that these distinctions are pedantic to a certai extent, and what must be upheld is the facticity that all life is precious. The appropriate use of any nuclear armaments then is deterrance, but only insofar as it is towards disarmament. The issue of the Catholic stance on nuclear weapons is complex and multifaceted, and Anscombe represents one particular camp. However, speaking from the CCC, which is papal teaching, and therefore infallible (haha :))) ), we *ought* to not justify the use of nuclear weapons in most (if not all) contexts.
tl;dr
My attitude towards analytic philosophy is kinda like NASCAR. I don't really get it. Some people love it. Some people think it's the greatest thing ever to the point of insufferability. I think it's at least pretty cool at the outset. I am nevertheless happy it exists though, even if I'll probably never get into it.
I pretty much agree with everyone you said here. I want to extend an olive branch, haha. About the CCC, I meant that pacifism in general is not catholic teaching. However, Anscombe, and most Catholic I assume, think that nukes are de facto against just war theory and therefore immoral. There's very little use cases which don't go against jus in bello restrictions.
Your comment about nascar was so silly and amazing, it absolutely sent me dude 🤣
This is an excellent article, Mark. Well-written and thought out. I'm also a fan of Anscombe, although I don't know a lot about her. I'm looking forward to your next post.
I've also researched the morality of atomic weapons and write about it in my book "Star Trek and Faith." A couple of additional points.
1) Truman felt guilty about dropping the bomb afterwards, and he didn't want any more bombs dropped after Nagasaki. According to Henry Wallace, Truman’s secretary of commerce, who was in on the discussions:
"Truman said he had given orders to stop the atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, he said, 'all those kids.'”
2) We were already firebombing cities, and we had already killed 100,000 in the firebombing of Tokyo. Firebombing is a strategy to kill civilians to "hurt the morale" of the enemy. By the time we dropped the bombs, we had already firebombed 58 Japanese cities. We were using the murder of civilians to try and stop the war, and the atomic bombings were just an extension of that.
I've found Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" immensely helpful on the history of the bomb.
Hey uncle Mark. Thank you so much. Excited to see more from your Substack! :)
It sounds like you've done quite a bit of research on the bomb. I'd love to discuss it more sometime soon. It certainly makes sense that Truman felt such overwhelming guilt. Even just the phrase, “all those kids,” is such a gut-wrenching phrase. It colors in the rather dry, black and white judgment that the bombs were a war crime.
I was aware of the firebombing, but not the extent of it. That's wild to learn. Maybe it would've been better not to focus on the atomic bomb, since the same philosophical principles/arguments apply in both cases. I know there were some similar strategies used, like carpet-bombing, in Vietnam if memory serves.
Thanks for the book rec, and thanks for reading. Hope to see y'all soon. Come visit over here in Scotland sometime!
I’d love to discuss anytime! I forgot to mention the other book i used in my research, which is a classic on this: “The Irreversible Decision” by Robert C. Batchelder.
We’d LOVE to see you in Scotland sometime! Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Dude, super fair. The linguistic stuff definitely comes up in Intention, which makes it insanely difficult to read. That said, it's worth it to get through :) Thanks for reading!
I've had it for maybe 10 years and perused it here and there but I know I need to actually read it someday haha. I really liked her stuff on CS Lewis's arg from reason and really really hated her essay on the 'I' indexical but I will move intention up the list
Ahh no way, I LOVED her essay on the "I" indexical, haha. I wrote a grad essay on it. It's not everyone's cuppa tea though, I suppose. I've heard about her response to Lewis but haven't read it yet--I'll definitely take a look.
I'm a Descartes stan still holding out hope for a transcendental argument interpretation of his cogito/Augustine's si fallor sum so I was destined to hate it. Her essay on Lewis's arg helped him reformulate it into a much better arg imo and I think Peter Geach ended up siding with Lewis against her which is spicy if true
Fair enough. I’d love to discuss Descartes more sometime, because although I appreciate Descartes (he gets a lot of hate these days) I think the cogito ergo sum idea does ultimately fail.
A lot of excellent points here. Although I personally am not a fan of how analytic philosophy seems to bracket out the pure fact away from the manner in which the phenomenon is actually occurring in the world (i.e., I doubt analytic propositions would do much good in describing purely qualitative concepts like the gruesomeness of the event, etc.), I appreciate the necessity of having clear distinctions and categories in place for practicalities such as policymaking and other such endeavors. I'm reminded of a movie I watched by Jesse Eisenberg a few days ago where one of the protagonists chastizes a tour guide during a Holocaust memorial tour for focusing too much on the stats, numbers, and definitions at the expense of "the experience of the people and their memory" and "being in the moment." True enough, if my readings of analytic philosophy were anything to go by, the whole thing seems rather robotic and detached--like the Manhattan Project had more emotions in their formulae than the Vienna Circle did. Any ideas of where I could be proven wrong?
As I understand it, Anscombe's protest fell on deaf ears (at least at the time), and was mostly panned. The problem is not so much that we do not realize Truman is a mass murderer. The problem is we have engendered a culture that tolerates mass murder. The US hasn't done many favors in making the world think otherwise as of now. It is no longer enough to show that mass murder was committed; meaningful discourse to make lasting impact cannot just clarify, but needs to enforce some meaningful change in attitudes.
I wonder where analytic philosophy goes now with that in mind. Although I don't doubt that you've probably only shown only around 8% of its power, I'm not sure there is anything in the analytic repertoire of normative ethics (as I understand) to convince the average person that mass murder is inherently untolerable. No amount of marginal utility, hedons, maxims, etc. can do that. (God forbid, you just intuit that it is wrong, which veers a little to close to my camp, no?) As you are probably aware as a student of phenomenology, some facts and existents in the world cannot be known nor intuited, but rather they must be felt. Many a jingoist has had their stomachs churn and their hearts broken by a visit to either one of the atomic bomb museums, or a cursory viewing of Barefoot Gen or Grave of the Fireflies. I still cannot watch the latter without crying.
P.S.
Just to avoid confusion--Anscombe's position is not the normative Catholic position. The Vatican has condemned and prohibited the use of nuclear armaments since their inception, and they advocate a categorical pacifisim.
Thanks, Gob.
Firstly, I completely agree that analytic philosophy certainly has its limits. I agree with you that its limits are the affect, the gut-punch, the phenomena as it is, which cannot fully be captured at all, but less so by the dry philosophizing of analysis. However, it is useful to combat those who irrationally excuse war crimes. Continental philosophy has an opposite tendency to promote vagueness, and thereby make it prone to abuse by authoritarian leaders, fascism, etc.
Second, analytic philosophy is useful because people think that they have a rational view--that they are not committing mass murder. Especially in the West, a lot of sophistry goes on in politics to make a nation's actions seem rational. That's where analytic philosophy, like Anscombe, can slice through the BS. I think that in addition, people have become cold to reality, but at least the veneer of rationality is pulled back.
I think continental and analytic philosophy are important, but again, I agree with you as you say that most people don't heed philosophy at all, analytic or otherwise. That's why museums, works of art, myths, movies, memoirs, etc., are so essential.
Also... The Catholic Church is not pacifist. Not at all--they affirm something like Augustinian just war theory, like Anscombe... Am I wrong?
Totally on board with your take that it useful to combat those who *irrationally* excuse war crimes. In that sense, analytic philosophers are kind of like a secret police who have specialized methods of eliminating specialized targets. I totally get that. But unlike you, the vast majority of analytic philosophers I've met do not recognize their limitations. Over reliance on the ostensible pure factuality of what they preach ends up leading to a slippery slope of some kind of intellectual hegemony. It comes off as something along the lines of a neo-scientism, or to use one of Derrida's terms, a logocentrism. I firmly believe that both spheres of philosophy ought to function as mutual checks and balances of sorts, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for figures on both sides that try to extend an olive branch (such as Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Graham Priest, Markus Gabriel, Hubert Dreyfus, etc.).
The idea that not committing mass murder is an inherently rational view does not seem satisfactory. The rationaltiy of this seems contingent on some kind of a priori intuition that I feel necessitates some degree of proof and further investigation. Bear in mind that I am not quesitoning it's moral reprehensibility, but its intrinsic rationality. A good philosophy can definitely still cling to a priori intuitions, but they must be levied with a proportional degree of skepticism in my opinion. This includes the concept of rationality itself. Moreover, I think good philosophy does not necessarily need to be rational. A hot take, but the scope of rationality is nebulous, as I'm sure you know. Prima facie there is nothing rational about Trinitarian theology or most other fiedistic doctrines, but nevertheless they are often worth exploring and upholding.
Also, Catholics do tend to cling stubbornly towards different flavors of Just War. That much is true. But atomic weapons violate certain conditions of Just War that render them categorically wrong. Namely, these are distinction (i.e., non-combatants are targeted) and proportionality (self-explanatory; basically, no overkill). I realize that making such distinctions smells very analytic, and I am aware of that. The Cathetcism of the Catholic Church, which is the compendium of most of their salient teachings, however would imply that these distinctions are pedantic to a certai extent, and what must be upheld is the facticity that all life is precious. The appropriate use of any nuclear armaments then is deterrance, but only insofar as it is towards disarmament. The issue of the Catholic stance on nuclear weapons is complex and multifaceted, and Anscombe represents one particular camp. However, speaking from the CCC, which is papal teaching, and therefore infallible (haha :))) ), we *ought* to not justify the use of nuclear weapons in most (if not all) contexts.
tl;dr
My attitude towards analytic philosophy is kinda like NASCAR. I don't really get it. Some people love it. Some people think it's the greatest thing ever to the point of insufferability. I think it's at least pretty cool at the outset. I am nevertheless happy it exists though, even if I'll probably never get into it.
I pretty much agree with everyone you said here. I want to extend an olive branch, haha. About the CCC, I meant that pacifism in general is not catholic teaching. However, Anscombe, and most Catholic I assume, think that nukes are de facto against just war theory and therefore immoral. There's very little use cases which don't go against jus in bello restrictions.
Your comment about nascar was so silly and amazing, it absolutely sent me dude 🤣
This is an excellent article, Mark. Well-written and thought out. I'm also a fan of Anscombe, although I don't know a lot about her. I'm looking forward to your next post.
I've also researched the morality of atomic weapons and write about it in my book "Star Trek and Faith." A couple of additional points.
1) Truman felt guilty about dropping the bomb afterwards, and he didn't want any more bombs dropped after Nagasaki. According to Henry Wallace, Truman’s secretary of commerce, who was in on the discussions:
"Truman said he had given orders to stop the atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, he said, 'all those kids.'”
2) We were already firebombing cities, and we had already killed 100,000 in the firebombing of Tokyo. Firebombing is a strategy to kill civilians to "hurt the morale" of the enemy. By the time we dropped the bombs, we had already firebombed 58 Japanese cities. We were using the murder of civilians to try and stop the war, and the atomic bombings were just an extension of that.
I've found Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" immensely helpful on the history of the bomb.
Hey uncle Mark. Thank you so much. Excited to see more from your Substack! :)
It sounds like you've done quite a bit of research on the bomb. I'd love to discuss it more sometime soon. It certainly makes sense that Truman felt such overwhelming guilt. Even just the phrase, “all those kids,” is such a gut-wrenching phrase. It colors in the rather dry, black and white judgment that the bombs were a war crime.
I was aware of the firebombing, but not the extent of it. That's wild to learn. Maybe it would've been better not to focus on the atomic bomb, since the same philosophical principles/arguments apply in both cases. I know there were some similar strategies used, like carpet-bombing, in Vietnam if memory serves.
Thanks for the book rec, and thanks for reading. Hope to see y'all soon. Come visit over here in Scotland sometime!
I’d love to discuss anytime! I forgot to mention the other book i used in my research, which is a classic on this: “The Irreversible Decision” by Robert C. Batchelder.
We’d LOVE to see you in Scotland sometime! Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Really appreciate this. Reminded me that I like Anscombe even if she was a Wittgensteinian 😅
Dude, super fair. The linguistic stuff definitely comes up in Intention, which makes it insanely difficult to read. That said, it's worth it to get through :) Thanks for reading!
I've had it for maybe 10 years and perused it here and there but I know I need to actually read it someday haha. I really liked her stuff on CS Lewis's arg from reason and really really hated her essay on the 'I' indexical but I will move intention up the list
Ahh no way, I LOVED her essay on the "I" indexical, haha. I wrote a grad essay on it. It's not everyone's cuppa tea though, I suppose. I've heard about her response to Lewis but haven't read it yet--I'll definitely take a look.
I'm a Descartes stan still holding out hope for a transcendental argument interpretation of his cogito/Augustine's si fallor sum so I was destined to hate it. Her essay on Lewis's arg helped him reformulate it into a much better arg imo and I think Peter Geach ended up siding with Lewis against her which is spicy if true
Fair enough. I’d love to discuss Descartes more sometime, because although I appreciate Descartes (he gets a lot of hate these days) I think the cogito ergo sum idea does ultimately fail.