Abstract
In a move characteristic of appropriationist approaches to the history of philosophy, Katzav (Asian Journal of Philosophy 2(47):1–26, Katzav, 2023a) argues that Grace Andrus de Laguna had, already in 1909, developed what is effectively a critique of analytic philosophy (as a form of epistemically conservative philosophy). In response to Katzav’s claim, this symposium paper attempts to pay closer attention to the context of de Laguna’s paper. As Katzav also acknowledges, de Laguna was dialogically engaged with two non-analytic tendencies in her contemporary philosophy, namely pragmatism and absolute idealism. More specifically, her target is Dewey’s, 1905 defence of ‘immediatism’ (and, by extension, James’ ‘radical empiricism’), which was put forward in opposition to absolute idealism. In 1909, de Laguna separates ‘immediatism’ from ‘instrumentalism’ as two distinct tendencies within pragmatism, rejecting the former and embracing the latter. By thus situating her critique, I argue that, while successful against Deweyan non-analytic ‘immediatism’ (and possibly also James’s Bergsonist variant of this view), it cannot, without further ado, be charitably interpreted as applicable against Russell’s analytic theory of sense-data.
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Notes
See Vrahimis (2022, pp. 185–187, 192).
See, e.g. Janssen-Lauret (2023a). Responding to Katzav (2023b), Janssen-Lauret (2023b) has recently argued that taking an expansive view of ‘analytic philosophy’ as stretching back to Jones and Welby would entail that de Laguna’s work should actually be understood as being part of analytic philosophy.
See Vrahimis (2013).
See also, e.g. Neuber (2023) on the contributions to this anti-idealist stance by the American critical realists and neo-realists. Katzav notes that de Laguna’s most extended criticism of specific analytic philosophers is found in her response to the neo-realists, ‘some of whom can be thought of as part of early analytic philosophy’ (Katzav, 2023a, p. 3).
De Laguna (1909, pp. 396–397) presents ‘instrumentalism’ as lying behind pragmatist efforts to replace traditional ‘pre-Kantian rationalist’ (p. 396), non-naturalistic conceptions of epistemology with naturalistically inclined genetic explanations of the evolutionary development of thought-processes. She remains opposed to the ‘absolutist’s condemnation of such procedure as “merely psychological”’ (p. 397), rejecting the absolutist thesis ‘that psychological investigation is essentially and ultimately incapable of throwing light on the nature of meaning’ (p. 397). Her ‘instrumentalism’ thus, at least prima facie, appears to be psychologistic, though demonstrating this claim lies beyond the remit of this investigation.
Katzav (2023a, p. 23) rightly sees that de Laguna does not completely abandon the Absolute Idealist idea of a ‘completely coherent system of knowledge’ (Katzav, 2023a, p. 16), but rather reconfigures it, in instrumentalist terms, into ‘an informative abstraction that can have a regulative role’ (p. 16).
De Laguna would therefore presumably have rejected, as a false dilemma, James’ (1910) depiction of his contemporary philosophy as a choice between Bradley’s absolute idealism and a Bergsonist radical empiricism. James’ position ignores her 1909 alternative to both.
Vrahimis (2022, pp. 217–219) reconstructs a debate between Stebbing and Costelloe-Stephen concerning the Bergsonian critique of abstraction.
Katzav admits that part of de Laguna’s work overlaps, sans conservatism, with ‘much of what is ordinarily part of epistemically conservative philosophy’ (Katzav, 2023a, p. 16).
Katzav (2023a) does not consider later transitions in Russell’s thinking that eventually bring him closer to the pragmatists (e.g. James) that he vehemently criticises in 1914. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing out that the question remains as to whether de Laguna’s criticisms could be more readily applicable to Russell’s later work.
While Grace de Laguna could not have explicitly addressed Russell’s, 1914 position in 1909, Theodore de Laguna (1915) did in fact write an extensive critical response to Russell’s (1914) theory of sense-data, which is not mentioned by Katzav (2023a).
Russell had only begun to talk of ‘sense-data’ in 1910 (Nasim, 2009, p. 99)—though, as Nasim (2009) shows, the debate among British ‘new realists’ that resulted in Russell’s theory goes back to 1904 (and the origins of sense-data theory are traceable back to Stout’s earlier reception of Brentano (e.g. Nasim, p. 89)). Nonetheless, the Russellian analysis of sense-data Katzav (2023a, pp. 4–5) refers to was first put forth in 1914. Of course, such contextualist caveats do not constitute an objection to Katzav’s appropriationist claim that de Laguna (1909) can be used to criticise Russell (1914).
On Costelloe-Stephen’s mereology, see Vrahimis (2022, pp. 159–162).
See Neuber (2022).
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Vrahimis, A. Grace Andrus de Laguna’s 1909 critique of pragmatism and absolute idealism: a contextualist response to Katzav. AJPH 2, 67 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-023-00122-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-023-00122-x