Philosophical Analysis: Strawson between Wittgenstein and Quine

Abstract

In Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy, Strawson offers reasons why certain features of the therapeutic analysis and the Quinean conception threaten the task of the connective analysis. The reasons against the first are that it possesses a "negative spirit" and it is "asystematic" while the reason against the second is its "ontologic reductionism". I will try to show that those features are not dangerous once Wittgenstein's and Quine's conceptions are understood in a weaker sense than Strawson understands them. On the one hand, I will try to show that the negative spirit is a question of attitude that does not have a significant influence on the outcome of the analysis which is the same as that of the connective analysis; and that the therapeutic analysis is compatible with systematicity. On the other hand, I will try to show that because the continuity thesis of Quinean naturalism does not set aside common sense, it is not a threat to the connective analysis.