Analytic philosophy and journalism (imitation of Laura Riding)


Author. Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Abstract. Analytic philosophers nowadays also write histories of their discipline, or some do, but do they do this as one might expect? Much as they sit around discussing some paradox, which they think involves a false conclusion but has premises we find attractive, so you might expect them to start with a mythical history and then explain what is wrong with it. Do they do this? I am not convinced they do. In this paper, I introduce a mythical history of analytic philosophy and journalism relations, in which this happened: era 1, analytic philosophers sought to distinguish themselves from journalists by having short papers requiring LITTLE RESEARCH, which presented clever responses to clever puzzles; era 2, analytic philosophers decided that certain topics could safely be treated more journalistically, because the newspapers do not cover such abstract topics. The paper is written as an imitation of modernist poet, essayist, and fiction writer Laura Riding. I use discussion of the is-ought gap to illustrate my mythical history, but end up unfortunately devaluing Professor Charles Pigden.
Draft version: version 1 (18th October 2025, Analysis reference added 12 Sep 2026)


        In the beginning, there were no scientists, there were only philosophers. And each philosopher was a fool. But no philosopher was simply a fool: a fool who is safe for us to ignore, for they are nothing but a fool. Each philosopher had an idea, a big idea. And each philosopher built a system based on their one big idea. From this idea follows one conclusion, another conclusion, a third conclusion… behold a system! This persisted for centuries, even after science took over the world, until some clever Englishmen who held discussions in clubs, as clever Englishmen are wont to do, invented analytic philosophy and said to scientists, "You have large departments and laboratories and government money and technological successes, but we have our own little university department and to have our own little university department is not nothing, is it?"


Analytic philosophers set about defining terms, which they called analyses, ignoring but also not ignoring the fashion for Freud, but how do you define a term except in terms of other terms and what if you used a term being defined in the definition? It was always a little circle at risk of circularity. And what about journalism? Any professor who is not a scientist with a lab is sure to be asked: what is the difference between you and a newspaper man? And the analytic philosophers came up with a most troubling answer for everyone else in the university: the newspaper men do research, but we do not. They would write little articles in little journals of their own on little puzzles, such as can you logically arrive at a conclusion about what we ought to do merely from a premise about what is? And the message was clear: newspaper men must work hard at gathering information, because they are stupid, whereas we write in with our counterexamples because we are clever. Of course, to the rest of the world analytic philosophers said, "This our research," but they knew very well what the rest of the world calls research: research is the labour of gathering information; the more information, the more there has been research.


This was all in the first era of analytic philosophy and journalism. Eventually the analytic philosophers decided that there were articles like long newspaper features which it was safe for some amongst them to write, for they dealt with abstract matters, which the newspaper men themselves were incapable of dealing with.  Thus a second era began and Professor Charles Pigden appeared and began to write long introductory articles on the is-ought gap and what the latest trends about it are today.


I ought to apologize to Professor Charles Pigden, who is always respectful to me, even addressing me as Doctor online, and from whom I have learnt so much. I needed an example. I now have some explanation for why others are not respectful: look at what would happen! (You know, Professor Brian Leiter did not put my Greek style myth I shared on Timothy Williamson review comments section!)


References
Analysis volume 25, number 2 December 1964.
(A set of papers on the is-ought gap.)
Collected papers of Charles Pigden.
Collected writings of Laura Riding.
Leiter, Brian. 2025. Williamson "the bullet-biter". Leiter Reports 10/10/25:
https://leiterreports.com/2025/10/10/williamson-the-bullet-biter/