Margaret MacDonald’s scientific common-sense philosophy

Abstract

Margaret MacDonald (1907MacDonald ( -1956 was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has lately received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald's philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyze the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy on actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how "scientific common-sense" is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other.

“Bad philosophy” and “derivative philosophy”: Labels that keep women out of the canon

“…Next, in many cases, the lack of discussion of women philosophers' work in this period is due to the fact that they are deemed to be followers of more well-known male philosophers and thus are labelled as having produced only derivative philosophy. For example, Alice Ambrose and Margaret MacDonald's works are usually noted only as being "Wittgensteinian" (see Connell 2022;Vlastis 2022). Despite their own distinctive philosophical positions, some of 3 See also Paul 2011, 14, on the historical connection between scholarly virtues and "gentlemanly" identity.…”

“…Similarly, MacDonald's philosophy is thought to be essentially that of Moore (see Vlastis 2022) and Ladd‐Franklin's that of Pierce (see Boyd 2022). Martha Kneale wrote several chapters of the Development of Logic , but the work is usually credited only to her husband, William Kneale (see Heal 2022).…”