Abstract

The first of the two epigraphs selected for this paper comes from G. J. Warnock’s book, English Philosophy Since 1900. As one might expect given the title, Warnock’s subject is what has come to be known as analytic philosophy, and the hostility to metaphysics he mentions is that peculiar hostility which, for a time at least, seemed to be part and parcel of the analytic movement. What is important about this quotation in the present context is the pregnant suggestion that what was for a long time thought to be one of analytic philosophy’s defining features might have been a matter of mere fashion rather than the result of sufficiently well formulated arguments and views. My primary aim in this paper will be to develop this suggestion vis-à-vis the phenomenon of conformism and to show that, thus construed, there are good grounds for thinking it true. Specifically, I shall argue for what I call the conformist hypothesis: the view that it is a mistake to regard analytic philosophy as a philosophical school, movement, or tradition, and that, instead, it is a purely social entity unified by what are called interactional memes, maintained at high frequency by conformist transmission. My secondary aim will be to make a case for the claim that, if Warnock was right, then something was terribly wrong about the way analytic philosophy came not only to exist, but to dominate the social world of academic philosophy in certain geographical regions during the twentieth century.