For anthropologists? The worldview of analytic philosophy - the method as
technology assumption (the camera assumption)


Author's name (parents' draft): Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft): 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. British social anthropologists since the 1970s probably, are interested in comparing and contracting worldviews. I associate this kind of anthropology with Professor Marilyn Strathern and various anthropologists influenced by her. I shall apply it to analytic philosophy as I have experienced it in Manchester and also for almost a year at University College London, to identify an official assumption (or that is how official discourse of the discipline seems best modelled by us - I prefer that view here). The methods of the discipline are like a technology: much as one can photograph this, that, or the other, one can apply its methods to any philosophical topic, or even any topic (identifying premises and inferences of arguments and inquiring into how sound premises are). The assumption is not discussed, but is surely known by some. It is a you-can't-live-with-it-you-can't-live-without-itassumption, it casually seems to me. You cannot live with it, because you find that if you want to produce the recommended kind of work you will work in certain topics and take small steps from previous literature. But you cannot live without it, because you end up with folk who dubiously say, "Hey, I could not do the work properly in my topic."
Draft version: version 2 (30 May 2026 numerous small edits; version 1 on October 2nd 2025, unpolished)
Software used: Google docs
PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396121243_For_anthropologists_The_worldview_of_analytic_philosophy_-_the_method_as_technology_assumption_the_camera_assumption


"If everyone would guess the names
Don't put them in, use our frames"


British social anthropology and analytic philosophy interactions: round 1000? British anthropology under the influence of leading figure Marilyn Strathern – probably herself influenced by what she finds rewarding in earlier Cambridge anthropologist Sir James Frazer, how to win plaudits from swing voters, how best to trade with various other disciplines and unspeakable incentives – has focused on worldview description. A worldview consists of propositions, typically highly general propositions. Often they are assumed rather than being explicit, or that is Strathern's position (see Edward 2022). The anthropologist does fieldwork in a small isolated society, immersing themselves in that society's way of life for an extended period of time (one year or more), identifies general assumptions and contrasts the assumptions of one society and another. "These people assume that babies are new people and these people do not." Or that is a familiar image of anthropology anyway. There is also use of the fieldwork method in less exotic contexts in recent decades (and there have surely been tests of its use throughout its history as a professional academic discipline). Analytic philosophy is a tradition which traces its origins to Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, when they broke away from the fashionable Hegelianism of their day and promoted clarity, argument, and conceptual analysis (definition): that is the official story, the legend, and will do here. It dominates elite philosophy departments of the Anglo-Saxon/English speaking world. Here I wish to apply the method of anthropology to analytic philosophy.


I have experienced analytic philosophy since before coming to the University of Manchester really, in 1998 and had decades of experience of it, working as researcher or teaching assistant in a philosophy "department" from 2002 to 2013. (I also did an MA in philosophy at University College London.) One of the most interesting assumptions for social anthropologists of this field is what I call "the camera assumption." It does not require personal experience of the field, the discipline, the arena, to identify but maybe it helps. Camera is an analogy. Let's imagine a time before cameras. "I want a visual representation of this person," someone with authority says. An artist attempts the task but the authority is not pleased with the results. "You are usually so reliable. Do you not fancy her?" The artist makes an expression which is difficult for us to interpret. The authority dreams of a perfect image recording technology. We think a camera is this, or a pre-artificial intelligence camera. It will simply take a picture of what is before you. Let's not look into how true this is. We ordinarily assume it is not going to say, "I don't fancy this woman" and stop functioning.


Analytic philosophers seem to think of their methods analogously, or many do. These include defining concepts in terms of other concepts (e.g. knowledge is justified true belief); specifying the premises and inferences of an argument and assessing these; using hypothetical counterexamples, and more.
(Assumption) The methods apply to all academic fields or at least all philosophical topics.
I call this the camera assumption, but maybe they had another name for it before cameras, and I guess you might think of it as the method-as-technology assumption. (Or the method-as-pre-AI-technology assumption. The computer communicates that it is not downloading a paper. "You don't fancy her?")


Why think they make this assumption? Consider the perennial disputes between analytic and continental philosophy, with analytic philosophers saying that this is obscure and hoping for definitions of key terms and greater specification of premises. The best explanation would seem to be reliance on this camera assumption. Consider also what happens in a supervision of a postgraduate student, whatever the topic really. Your supervisor says, "Hey, this needs to be made clearer," "Don't understand you there," and "Are you relying on this assumption? Then say so. No Fregean would accept this assumption though." Also remarks people make. "What they do in these other disciplines just looks like really bad philosophy." These are socially intelligent people, by the way.


It is conceivable and logically possible to apply the methods all over the place, but I suspect a lot of people will find problems with doing so: "My skills don't seem to work quite as well. I make uncharacteristic slight errors. Forgivable, but maybe by no journal I have reason to submit to." The average philosopher will probably find that the official norms of analytic philosophy and the advice which regularly gets him or her published has this consequence: it is rational to focus on topics which are standard or a small step from standard. Anything else and it is too messy.


But what happens if you slacken the camera assumption, as part of analytic philosophy's official ideology? For example, there is less expectation to meet standards in some topics. You are sure to encounter a strategist who says, "I am in a more marginal area and my skills desert me." You cannot abandon the camera assumption without huge costs with maintaining standards, I suspect. (The problem is not unique to analytic philosophy probably: "I just don't write realistically about those people. There is an island and there are two kinds of people. One kind hop around on one leg. The other kind try to kick away that leg and say: be sensible!")


I suspect the camera assumption is quite widely known now, but it was not when I started or these conversations involved significant pretence. And I have not seen it explicitly discussed. Given the possibility of pretence and the lack of explicit discussion (or simply the latter), I would say that the camera assumption belongs to a model and not get involved in to what extent it is believed or not believed. (They believe it in one sense but not in another sense? They believe it in all senses but realize there is some challenging data, which they deal with as follows…? Their teenage self would nod, but not their current self? They believe a highly qualified version?)


Now here is a contrast. Various people would say that no technology can ever live up to this ideal of simply functioning. The camera will strangely stop working, etc. Witchcraft? Magic? Physics which we have not understood yet? (The problem of how physics and chemistry and biology have not been able to incorporate the mind yet? I was watching a documentary about the origins of life and my mother, a person normally immensely interested in such matters, said, "Don't bother. They can't understand that.")


Appendix: coding solution
A simple open brackets, closer brackets detector. How do you code it? A simple version. You collect some input (a string, e.g. 8 letters long), you go through each character of the string, and you count the number of open bracket instances and the number of closed bracket instances and if there is a mismatch, you warn the user. For example, three open brackets and only two close brackets.  I wonder if there is a person who can work this out, but cannot code. "I am not a slave." And I wonder whether there is another person who says: now I can code it.


References
Brooks, Isabel. 2025. Now that phones alter our photos with our knowing, how do we know what's real? The Guardian 23rd December 2025. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/23/smartphones-photos-filters-pictures-software
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022. Do anthropologists use rational actor models? The case of Marilyn Strathern. IJRDO - Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research 7 (3). Available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWDAU.pdf
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. What should a "stupid" anthropologist say about analytic philosophy? Available on PhilPapers at:
https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWWSQ.pdf
Strathern, Marilyn. 1990. "Artifacts of History: Events and the Interpretation of Images." In Culture and History in the Pacific, edited by Jukka Sikkala, 25- 44. Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society. Available at:
https://philarchive.org/archive/STRAOH
Williams, Bernard. Contemporary Philosophy: A Second Look. In Nicholas Bunin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), 2003 (second edition, first edition  1996), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Available at:
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/5634300/blackwell_companion_to_philosophy.2002.pdf?1737824815=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DDescartes_and_Malebranche.pdf&Expires=1780163117&Signature=CE5Vgf55fP4nsFIPNw0tZ9zt4wz-yV2kDRJssLrruQU-jat9wiFjFDkqNUnnArENHDY-4KEamSewtYUjAkLTpuodo0NgRWpIus2yg1m4QJN93h5KngGBO6uF1jVasOMFruE~m6YyeDJDv9h-rOnRQlOCm6JmAhxCEz3xgDUspbknrOhHsxJoAV4JDj8FBsQKs~rgsPWIRrFSD52jHXJBgyR2OI5~eXnv~vpgM4cA3JkELG5SpNjkj~qwV8orVqSk7n5rtQ8yBpb4XJ6RDFgfoCVo0sAFe7jBm0SY4D5S2HxfnkDYX-yajjo8Gum3HAD3-AJfffMGfXDRfK5B5vjGpA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA#page=40
(Williams says that analytic philosophers mostly regard their way of doing philosophy as the responsible way. p.25. I didn't refer to this observation, but the camera assumption is plausibly a second commitment. Would it have been better to rewrite this as a response to Williams, extending his description?)