ABSTRACT

Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) 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 recently 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 the 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 analyse 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 to 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.

摘要

玛格丽特·麦克唐纳（Margaret MacDonald，1907-56 年）是英国早期分析哲学史上的核心人物，这得益于她的编辑工作和她自己的著作。虽然她后来关于美学和政治哲学的工作最近受到关注，但她在 1930 年代的早期著作呈现了一种连贯的，在当时，是常识和科学哲学的惊人融合。在这些论文中，麦克唐纳解决了她那个时代哲学的核心问题：验证、归纳问题以及哲学与科学方法之间的关系。麦克唐纳的科学哲学始于我们应该仔细分析科学实践的要素（特别是它的时间特征）以及科学家描述这种实践的方式的原则。那是，以实际的科学语言。麦克唐纳展示了“科学常识”与她那个时代的两种主要哲学流派是如何不一致的。将麦克唐纳带回到分析哲学的故事中，纠正了这样一种印象，即在早期的分析哲学中，一方面摩尔和维特根斯坦的风格与另一方面的维也纳学派之间存在根本的二分法。