Philosophy Research Seminar: Dr Nakul Krishna (Cambridge)

Abstract: Historians of analytic philosophy have looked to many things to unite the disparate range of philosophers and texts commonly labelled 'analytic': to methods, doctrines, influences, and occasionally, to style. But what does it mean to think of analytic philosophy as a tradition united by, if anything, a common style? The answer is often thought too obvious to be worth articulating. In this paper, I shall not be trying to defend a stylistic conception of analytic philosophy, simply to clarify what it would even mean to endorse such a conception. I shall draw on classic work in analytic aesthetics on artistic style (Nelson Goodman, Richard Wollheim) as well more recent work in literary studies. I shall argue that the best – most explanatory – way to think of the role of style in unifying the practice of analytic philosophers is in what Wollheim calls a 'generative' way: as a set of acquired dispositions to think, talk and write in some ways rather than others. This conception invites new kinds of scholarship in the history of analytic philosophy, scholarship that explores the various institutional means – teaching, doctoral supervision, publishing practices – by which such dispositions come to be acquired.

4.4
Roscoe Building
Manchester

Dr Stephen Ingram