Analytic philosophy of education: Some suggested questions and directions

Introduction

Philosophy of education is a complex field. While it often advances theoretical concerns, it also tries to bridge the divide between theory and practice. It addresses a wide range of basic philosophical issues (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, social and political philosophy, etc.) and problems concerning educational policies and practices in the social, legal and institutional contexts where education takes place. To provide one example: the issue of justice is not, for some educational philosophers, an abstract matter of ideal theory but it also becomes a concretized problem to the solution of which philosophical insights are expected to contribute. Such is the case when the question about university admissions is connected with ethical sensibilities and issues of the specific good that universities provide (Kotzee and Martin, 2013).

As a discipline, therefore, educational philosophy scrutinizes inter alia how theoretical explorations may reconstruct education’s connection with society to important practical effect. Since education is an integral and constitutive part of any society, precisely this connection has been philosophically discussed from Plato and Aristotle to Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Herbart and down to Dewey. Outside of the field of educational philosophy, various broader intellectual currents such as ‘. . . Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, postmodernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises . . .’ (Siegel et al., 2018) and so on also contain debates about education. Evidently, educational issues may be tackled from diverse philosophical directions and traditions. As Robin Barrow (2011) remarks, there is a long tradition of teaching educational philosophy as an introduction to different ‘schools of thought’ or ‘-isms’. Barrow seems convinced that ‘...embracing philosophical analysis is not itself to embrace any kind of ideology . . .’ (p. 21). However, whether and to what extent philosophy of education as a discipline is hospitable to different schools of thought may depend, at least to a degree, on the ideologies and politics that may affect the popularity, currency and even hegemony, of a discourse at a given time. As Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) have shown, discourses – various ‘-isms’ among them – struggle for hegemony within a social configuration. The social configuration of the transnational community of educational philosophers is no exception. Educational philosophy then becomes the arena in which various philosophical theories compete for applicability, verifiability and vindication through concrete, practical challenges (Papastephanou, 2009: 451).

Given the aforementioned, this article investigates whether there is any place for the school of thought that is known as analytic philosophy of education (APE) in the aftermath of postmodernism, and whether APE can be treated as a ‘method’, among other alternative ‘methods’, that can be applied regardless of what kind of ‘-ism’ or ideology one embraces. ¹ An additional aim is to suggest some important questions for APE to take into consideration. Such questions have haunted the historical course of APE from R. S. Peters’ emblematic intervention onwards. Concerning the question about the right dose of normative aspirations guiding conceptual analysis (CA), we appeal to Charles Mills’ critique of ‘ideal-theory’; concerning well-rehearsed charges of APE with abstraction and armchair philosophizing, we turn to how pragmatic sensibilities in Sally Haslanger’s ameliorative conceptual analysis (ACA) take APE handlings of normativity some steps further; and, concerning the charge of dealing with concepts in flat and narrow ways (e.g. ignoring conceptual histories or complex conceptual entanglements and their politics), we use Marianna Papastephanou’s idea of stereoscopic vision that emphasizes attention to conceptual interconnectivities and tensions.We argue that conceptual engineering (CE) may be a promising avenue for analytic educational theory if it is used with a critical intent that is more heuristic and inconclusive than prescriptively ideal. Before we deploy this argument let us clarify what characterizes the analytic philosophical perspective and what might have led to the decline in APE’s popularity within the transnational educational-philosophical community.

Some characteristics of a distinctively analytic way of doing educational theory

Generally, as an area of specialization, philosophy of education is marked by the ambivalence of the genitive ‘of’ that brings philosophy and education together. In its objective sense the genitive ‘of’ constructs education as an object and receptacle of philosophical endeavour where philosophical insights are imported in a sort of ‘one way’ transfer. In its subjective sense the genitive ‘of’ evokes educational theory and practice as a subject of active and original philosophizing in its own right that illuminates aspects of pedagogy that philosophers may have neglected or missed in their own discussions of paideia. Philosophy of education frequently encounters the challenge of addressing and balancing such ambivalences and tensions (Papastephanou, 2009). More specifically, APE has also been struggling with tensions concerning its commitment to practical intent and its theoretical aversion to high-level directives, as we will see later on in this section. Let us, however, say a little more about APE as such. ²

It would be wrong to characterize analytic philosophy as a body of doctrine. There are numerous competing ‘-isms’ and political ideologies within analytic philosophy, such as realism, idealism, scepticism, positivism, utilitarianism, liberalism, communitarianism and so on. Neither would it be satisfying to categorize analytic philosophy as a specific style of doing philosophy. The style of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus greatly differs from the style of Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. Attention to the method of analysing rather than synthesizing better captures what binds different analytic philosophers together; analytic philosophers tend to emphasize detail rather than trying to grasp ‘the big picture’. ³ As Jane Gatley (2023) explains, philosophers such as Ryle and Strawson, as stalwarts of the analytic tradition, ‘saw philosophy as a technical pursuit directed primarily at careful, focused analysis of concepts’; R.S. Peters and Paul Hirst, both major figures of the APE, aligned themselves with these philosophers (p. 508). Hirst and Peters claimed that ‘what we do is to examine the use of words in order to see what principle or principles govern their use’ (cf. Gatley, 2023: 509). Thus, in seeking precision, clarity and appropriate use of terms, analytic philosophy is concerned with analysing arguments, propositions and concepts, and how they connect to other propositions and concepts. In this sense, the aim of careful arguments, and methodical examination of concepts and theories, follows a tradition from Plato, Locke, Hume and others. Analytic philosophy is usually identified as a movement beginning with philosophers such as Bertrand Russel, Ludwig Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore, among others. Regardless of one’s viewing it as a ‘movement’ or a ‘method’, analytic philosophy has, historically, had a notable impact on the field of educational philosophy. However, although APE’s preference for specific analyses over ‘big picture’ philosophizing is typical of its method, it has also been diagnosed as a possible shortcoming: as early as 1979, ‘with evidence for its [APE’s] decline piling up’ (Evers, 1979: 1), a fundamental question was ‘. . . what general criteria does APE provide for determining the adequacy of analyses . . .’ (Evers, 1979: 1)?

Given that such analyses may be regarded as abstract hair-splitting of unclear practical value and purpose, ⁴ namely, as ‘armchair philosophy’, a deeper purpose of the analytic method must be sought and unpacked. In 1942, Charles D. Hardie (2014 [1942]) began his monograph Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory by stating that the Cambridge analytical school attempted to analyse propositions in order to uncover if ‘. . . disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one . . .’ (p. ix). He then suggested that it is time that

a similar attitude became common in the field of education. That is, if two educational theorists disagree [. . .] it should be made clear whether the disagreement is factual or verbal or due to some emotional conflict. If this is to be done it is necessary always to state each theory in the clearest possible way so that no ambiguity may be allowed to flourish undiscovered’ (Hardie, 2014 [1942])

Some years later, R.S. Peters argued that ‘during the twentieth century philosophy has been undergoing a revolution, which has consisted largely in an increasing awareness of what philosophy is and is not’ (Peters, 2015 [1966]: 15). In fact, R. S. Peters, with a small group of contemporaries, ‘. . . set the foundations for analytic philosophy of education in the 1960s, a field which continues to this day . . .’ (Gatley, 2023: 508) to have its own niche in educational philosophy. According to Peters, we should abandon the old idea about an educational philosophy that provides ‘the formulation of high-level directives’ that ‘guide educational practice and shape the organisation of schools and universities’ (Gatley, 2023: 508):

Few professional philosophers would now think that it is their function to provide such high level directives for education or for life; indeed one of their main preoccupations has been to lay bare such aristocratic pronouncements under the analytic guillotine. They cast themselves in the more mundane Lockian role of underlabourers in the garden of knowledge. The disciplined demarcation of concepts, the patient explication of the grounds of knowledge and of the presuppositions of different forms of discourse, has now become their stock in trade. (Peters, 2015 [1966]: 15)

Though Peters’ statement complicates the aspiration of educational philosophy to be practical and theoretical, it reveals ongoing tensions that are not unique to APE. Indeed, problems of prescriptivism and instrumentalism that come up when one aspires to practical, rather than merely theoretical, import preoccupy all trends in contemporary educational philosophy. Since this is then a broader issue, here we only mention it and leave it aside. For the purposes of this article, it is noteworthy that, while Hardie’s statement reflects what we could call a ‘first wave’ analytic philosophy connected with aims of logical positivism and of creating a logically perfect language, Peters’ reflects the spirit of ‘the second wave’ of analytic philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle, John Austin and Richard Hare. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s later works, these philosophers shifted their focus towards ‘language games’ and ordinary language use. Careful attention to nuances in our everyday language may solve problems through uncovering and handling actual ‘misrepresentations’ in everyday language. ⁵ Furthermore, unlike educational theorists who posited, drawing on psychology and sociology, that a proper educational theory must be both explanatory and predictive but never prescriptive, Peters argues that an analysis of the concept ‘education’ necessarily involves ethical questions. The concept ‘education’, according to Peters (2015 [1966]), ‘has notions such as “improvement,” “betterment” and “the passing on of what is worthwhile” built into it’ (p. 91). This, however, does not imply that one can arrive at ‘particular values ascribed in particular societies to the variable of “being worthwhile”. The justification of such values, too, must go beyond the realm of conceptual analysis into that of ethical theory’ (Peters, 2015 [1966]: 91). In other words, Peters advanced an APE that acknowledges the intrinsically normative, and ethical, character of education without this entailing prescriptions and high-level directives.

In the 1970s, analytic philosophy increasingly attracted criticism; it appeared too focused on details and concepts. ⁶ Such criticisms also affected APE. Radical students in Britain accused Peters’ and the whole enterprise of CA of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to ‘traditional values’. During the same period, several important works from the continental philosophical persuasion, for instance, those of Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida, were translated into English. This, together with a renewed interest in Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Husserl, as well as in feminism and critical theory, resulted in diminished interest for APE (Siegel et al., 2018). ⁷

One main critical question raised by detractors of Peters’ theory was ‘whose English usage is being analyzed?’ Worthy of attention is also that whenever we engage in CA we must obtain awareness of our ideologically shaped and theory-laden perspective. This does not entail, however, that we should not increase our mutual understanding of concepts. As Barrow pointed out, there will always be many plausible accounts in any CA. This does not mean that any account will do: ‘Many but not any should, I suggest, be a mantra for our trade’ (Barrow, 2020: 719). In other words, APE does not stand or fall on positivist claims of APE’s supposed disinterestedness and lack of politics. That such positivist claims are indefensible does not make APE as a total a less important, let alone expendable, philosophical-educational discourse. On the contrary, we argue, APE provides its own key categories along with conceptual and investigative tools that shed their specific and valuable light on educational-philosophical issues. Moreover, there are clear indications (which will be exemplified in the next section) that contemporary analytic philosophy rejects the positivistic elements that have been associated with it, such as the ideas that CA is (1) non-normative, (2) detached from social context and (3) the only viable and decent activity for philosophy. Echoing this development, APE now constitutes one perspective on educational-philosophical topics in a more complex connection with alternative or rival ways of doing philosophy, instead of being either isolated and hegemonized or tarnished and discarded. Right now, apart from APE, there are diverse trends in educational philosophy with the French-continental variety being a widely dispersed one, rivalled by edusemiotic, Frankfurt School-critical-theoretical, virtue-epistemological and postcolonial alternatives (Papastephanou, 2016). From Papastephanou’s (2021) stereoscopic optic, it is important to avoid reductions of philosophy to master discourses and trends. APE then should be viewed as one way of doing philosophy whose convergences with, and divergences from, other philosophical ways enrich and invigorate the discipline of educational philosophy. For, diverse persuasions illuminate different aspects of the complex topic of educating and contribute different standpoints.

To illustrate one possible contribution of APE to educational philosophy, we indicatively associate some pressing issues of educational theory with a more heuristic, normative, analytical and conceptual approach. In a lengthier endeavour, the proper course of the article would have been to detail how APE has historically navigated the challenges that it encountered; what the solutions (if any) to the identified problems might be; what APE looks like today; what challenges persist and how the field deals with them. But, since some such ground is covered by one source (Gatley, 2023) and since the present article operates within stricter expositional confines, we limit our approach to examples of three domains within analytic philosophy that have gained increased attention lately, and may address some criticisms that have been raised against APE: social ontology, social epistemology and conceptual ethics. After briefly explaining these domains, we show how analytical critical theorists have begun to criticize the view that traditional a priori CA is something completely detached from discourse, politics and ideology.

Some questions that analytic educational theory helps investigate

As academic fields, all educational disciplines, including educational theory, rest heavily upon ontological, epistemological, conceptual and normative assumptions. These assumptions need to be critically addressed by scholars within educational and philosophical fields. During the last three decades, philosophers from ‘the analytic tradition’ have been addressing questions and criticisms about analytic philosophy. This is mainly done within domains such as social ontology, social epistemology and conceptual ethics, and it has also resulted in a stronger awareness, within analytic philosophy, of the important role that philosophy can, and should, play in addressing social and conceptual issues normatively. Educational theory must tackle normative issues, especially since education itself is highly ethical, and probably without exception, politically situated. Education involves asymmetrical power relations, knowledge acquisition and, as argued by Gert Biesta (2010) subjectification, socialization, and qualification. Social ontology, social epistemology and conceptual ethics are domains within analytic philosophy with the potential to tackle these matters anew.

While the social has been a philosophical topic since Greek antiquity, the terms ‘social ontology’ and ‘social epistemology’ have entered analytic philosophy rather lately. Central questions within social ontology are ‘What constitutes the social world?’ and ‘How does the social world arise from social interaction?’. Important figures within social ontology are Margaret Gilbert (1989), John Searle (1995, 2010), Michael Bratman (2014) and Raimo Tuomela (2013). Sometimes, these philosophers are called ‘the Big Four’ of social ontology (see, e.g. Chant et al., 2014). Their ideas are representative of a ‘Standard Model of Social Ontology’ (SMOSO, see, e.g. Guala, 2007) mainly aiming to explain how a set of distinct individuals may constitute some form of ‘we’ and share some ideas. Lately, SMOSO has become questioned and new discussions concerning ‘ideal’ versus ‘non-ideal’ social ontology have emerged (see, e.g. Brännmark, 2019; Burman, 2023). SMOSO ‘is a framework precisely in the sense that it “frames” the debate’; it defines, ‘like a Kuhnian paradigm’, what should be tackled and ‘provides a unified language and some tools to be used in tackling such problems’ (Guala, 2007: 961).

While Francesco Guala’s main criticism is that SMOSO chiefly tackles ‘what are essentially empirical questions from an a priori viewpoint’ (p. 957), instead of seriously considering the results of social scientists, Johan Brännmark (2019) and Åsa Burman (2023) criticize SMOSO from the more general framework of Mills’ (2005) critique of ‘ideal theory’. For Mills (2005), ideal theory relies on ‘idealization to the exclusion, or at least marginalization, of the actual’ (p. 168). It ‘either tacitly represents the actual as a simple deviation from the ideal, not worth theorizing in its own right, or claims that starting from the ideal is at least the best way of realizing it’.

Furthermore, Mills distinguishes between ‘ideal-as-normative’ and ‘ideal-as-idealized-method’. While the former simply means that normative theories as such relate to ideals, the latter notion of ideal theory, argues Mills, is highly problematic from a more critical perspective on social ontology. Idealization makes ideal theory ‘ideological’ and exclusive of the actual. ⁸ Thus, for Mills (2005), philosophers should stop using ideal theory as an idealized method when doing ethics and political philosophy because it cements and serves the interests of privileged groups.

An idealized social ontology of the modern type (as against, say, a Platonic or an Aristotelian type) will typically assume the abstract and undifferentiated equal atomic individuals of classical liberalism. Thus it will abstract away from relations of structural domination, exploitation, coercion, and oppression, which in reality, of course, will profoundly shape the ontology of those same individuals. (p. 168)

The point here is that there is an ongoing discussion within analytic social ontology that has the potential to address questions relevant to educational theory: methodological, epistemological and ontological questions that consider opaque power structures, discourses and hegemony. ⁹ Thereby, the criticism against Peters concerning the politics of language is an important matter that could, and should, be addressed by APE.

Miranda Fricker’s notion of epistemic injustice is also relevant to criticisms against Peters when he takes on the role of properly defining what education is. The traditional questions in epistemology have largely been individualistic in focusing on how persons should determine what is true or what the facts of a matter are. The traditional definition of knowledge as ‘justified, true belief’ can also be viewed as an ideal version of what we actually count as ‘knowledge’ in our everyday lives. Most often our knowledge is acquired through testimony rather than from systematic individual critical inquiry. Thus, knowledge, along with our conceptual resources, is much connected to trust, social power and our social world. These topics, then, are highly significant for an APE that can utilize its tools in yet unexplored though fertile contexts and synergize with theories from other persuasions that also focus on power politics and implications for ethics.

Thereby we are led to social epistemology, which fundamentally discusses ‘truth acquisition by groups, or collective agents’ and ‘how people can best pursue the truth (whichever truth is in question) with the help of, or in the face of, others’ (Goldman and O’Connor, 2021). Fricker (2010 [2007]) adds to these issues the ethical aspects of epistemology that operate in her distinction between testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. The former occurs when a hearer gives a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s words due to prejudice. The latter injustice occurs when someone is unfairly disadvantaged (when it comes to making sense of their social experiences) due to lack of terms, concepts and collective interpretative resources. Fricker’s overarching aim is

to bring to light certain ethical aspects of two of our most basic everyday epistemic practices: conveying knowledge to others by telling them, and making sense of our own social experiences. Since ethical features in question result from the operation of social power in epistemic interactions, to reveal them is also to expose a politics of epistemic practice. (p. 1f)

Thus, Fricker’s project is ethical and normative. While testimonial injustice is tightly connected with social ontology, social power and social positions, hermeneutical injustice concerns our repertoire and understanding of concepts. This brings us back to CA as a central method of the analytic tradition and analytic educational theory.

In doing CA, philosophers can make explicit the rules of use for concepts in everyday life, as well as within certain disciplines (e.g. the educational). Further, CA can explain how concepts relate to other concepts and how our linguistic frameworks affect our discursive practices that in turn determine what we can do and what we can say, and even what we can see, know or think. However, many of our concepts in everyday life and in our academic disciplines are varyingly indeterminate. Therefore, CA should not only be explicative (see, e.g. Haslanger, 2012; Thomasson, 2018); it should also try to determine whether tacit contradictions or incoherencies are present in our concepts and conceptions (Thomasson, 2018). Importantly, CA need not be limited to analysing or disentangling our concepts. Philosophers of education can also engage in what has been labelled conceptual ethics or conceptual engineering (CE), ¹⁰ that is, evaluating, revising or devising concepts. Sometimes we need new concepts to capture new discoveries, and sometimes new concepts can help us discover new things through empirical research. But evaluating, revising and devising concepts can also have political, social and moral purposes. ¹¹

Haslanger (2012) distinguishes ameliorative conceptual analysis (ACA) from purely descriptive approaches to CA and the traditional armchair philosophizing that aims to explicate our ordinary concepts through the method of reflective equilibrium. Ameliorative, or analytic, conceptual analysis, says Haslanger (2012), takes a more pragmatic approach to language and concepts, and some main questions to ask are:

What is the point of having these concepts? What cognitive or practical task do they (or should they) enable us to accomplish? Are they effective tools to accomplish our (legitimate) purposes; if not, what concepts would serve these purposes better? (p. 33)

She later adds: ‘why do we need them [the concepts in question] at all?’ ¹²

The next question to ask concerning Haslanger’s idea of ACA is what we should recognize as our ‘legitimate purposes’. Haslanger’s (2012) response seems rather sketchy and also changes in her writing from, for example, ‘helping us to tackle cognitive and practical tasks’ to ‘enhancing our conceptual resources to serve our (critically examined) purposes’ (p. 386). While the latter seems to be more in line with our idea of CA as something that should be done with a critical intent that is more heuristic and inconclusive, we stress that ‘our legitimate purposes’ should be up for debate. ¹³

Finally, CE can be done in many different ways. Here are some examples that we only mention as relevant though beyond the confines of this article:

Haslanger’s ACA, as a special kind of CE, strikes us as a fruitful addition to more traditional (e.g. Peters) CA within APE. ACA has the potential to accommodate ideology critique, normative concerns considering how concepts related to education are in use and thus a more pragmatic approach to both CA and everyday language use.

Conclusion

If we, educational theorists and philosophers, endorse the assumption that some concepts/conceptions are in one way or other better than alternative ones, we should scrutinize and review relevant concepts/conceptions such as ‘education’. We should try to understand them better or anew (‘re-viewing’ them). However, we may also try to change them. Similarly, we should be aware that whenever we are trying to ‘clarify’ concepts or to make new distinctions, this may have effects on our everyday concepts. It is therefore important, as suggested by Papastephanou (2021), that we constantly ‘zoom in’ pre-modified concepts within specific perspectives or ‘-isms’ (e.g. ‘distributive justice’, ‘social justice’, ‘educational justice’, etc.) and also ‘zoom out’ of them in order to obtain insight of the more general concept (e.g. of ‘justice’). Beyond the issue of justice, more generally, a stereoscopic outlook on concepts places distinctions of concepts into a complex relationship of synergy, tension and critical interplay. A stereoscopic outlook on conceptual interconnectivity gives us better insight also of the many face(t)s of philosophizing. Philosophy is not reducible to one way/manifestation of philosophizing. This idea, together with a broad understanding of CE that is more heuristic and inconclusive than prescriptively ideal, could possibly be thought of as a ‘third wave’ of analytic philosophy. While the first wave (i.e. the Cambridge school) tried to tailor philosophy to ‘correcting’ the natural language into an ideal, logically perfect language, the second wave acknowledged the complexities of our natural language and aimed to deal with ‘misrepresentations’. A third wave that could handle the question ‘Whose usage is being analyzed’ within APE, should first acknowledge that CA in the analytic tradition of clarifying and scrutinizing concepts is only one method among others, and, second, truly acknowledge that the conceptual, just as the social, world is rather messy and full of tensions. Third, it should therefore acknowledge that CA should be used with a critical intent that is more heuristic, open-ended and inconclusive than prescriptively ideal. Regardless of what kind(s) of strategy(ies) we choose, a stereoscopic approach suggests that we let a hundred flowers bloom. APE should be more intricately connected with other ways of philosophizing, instead of being just at odds with them. Single-focused and hegemonized perspectives block the view of APE as one philosophical discourse whose synergies and productive tensions with other philosophical discourses are valuable for educational philosophy.