Lady Mary Shepherd: The First Analytic Philosopher in the History of Philosophy?

What makes Shepherd’s¹ analytic approach to philosophy so compatible with scientific thinking?

There are various different approaches to doing analytic philosophy, all of them valuable in their own way. Here², I shall narrow my focus to summing up some features of analytic philosophy I’ve found in Shepherd’s writings, without imposing my methodological preferences onto her system of thought. As already discussed elsewhere, Lamarque and Olsen list features of analytic philosophy’s methodology³:  

·         the prominent application of logic and conceptual analysis;

·         the commitment to rational methods of argument;

·         the emphasis on objectivity and truth;

·         the predilection for spare, literal prose, eschewing overly rhetorical or figurative language;

·         the felt need to define terms and offer explicit formulation of thesis;

·         the quasi-scientific dialectical method of hypothesis/counter-example/modification;

·         the tendency to tackle narrowly defined problems, often working within on-going debates

They also list optional “presuppositions” alongside this⁴:

·         the treatment of scientific progress as paradigmatic;

·         a tendency towards ontological “parsimony”, realism about science, and physicalism about mind;

·         the belief that philosophical problems are in some sense timeless or universal, at least not merely constructs of history and culture. 

I think all of the above features can be found in Shepherd’s writing, except she is not a physicalist in her concept of mind. Her arguments are in a style of analytic philosophy which are explicitly logically structured, ahistorical and are not grounded in literary, cultural or theological concepts. She makes use of a quasi-scientific dialectical methodology, although this is more varied than only relying on counter-examples as a way of adjusting a hypothesis. I think we also need to bear in mind that scientific dialectic in her era had a somewhat different style from those used these days.

In addition, she displays other features which some analytic philosophers opt for, such as keeping to a tight focus, structure and debate within each of her treatises, as well as analyzing “features which are central and characteristic”⁵ of her chosen philosophical problems. Her philosophical arguments are “slow, meticulous” and she aims to provide “strong arguments to support precise, clearly defined theses”⁶. Shepherd also furthers philosophical discussion in accordance with the “familiar analytic mode” of putting forward her stance by comparing and contrasting her views with other philosophers, criticizing where necessary, so she thereby “enters into a dialogue with other contributors”⁷. I think Shepherd’s style of analytic philosophy suits the technical metaphysics she wants to examine and makes her metaphysics stronger because she has kept scientific possibilities in mind when considering metaphysical possibility, as far as it was possible to do so in her era.

These features are remarkable for philosophical works published in the early part of the nineteenth century, given that Frege, the so-called father of analytic philosophy, wasn’t even born until 1848. This makes me wonder:

Could Shepherd’s philosophical treatises be the first texts in the history of philosophy to clearly display an analytical approach to philosophy?

I suspect that they are so I have been exploring her methodology in my research into her treatises.   

    

¹Shepherd, M. (1827). Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. Retrieved March 19, 2017, from
https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt  

²Elsewhere I have examined analytic philosophy within other contexts:

 https://www.academia.edu/33536608/Spinoza_Paper_on_Methodology_2017_draft_

http://myspinozaresearchdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/the-analytic-approach-in-philosophy.html

³Lamarque, Olsen (ed) (2004), General Introduction to “Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The

 Analytic Tradition: An Anthology” edited by Lamarque and Olsen, Blackwell Publishing, p2

⁴ibid

⁵ibid p5

⁶ibid

⁷ibid