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A Companion to Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy)
edited by A. P. Martinich, David Sosa (Blackwell Publishers)
(Paperback)
is a comprehensive guide to over 40 of the significant analytic philosophers
from the last hundred years. The entries in this Companion are contributed by
contemporary philosophers, including some of the most distinguished now living,
such as Michael Dummett, Frank Jackson, P. M. S. Hacker, Israel Scheffler, John
Searle, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Stalnaker. They discuss the arguments of
influential figures in the history of analytic philosophy, among them Frege,
Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and Quine. The articles on each philosopher
provide clear and extensive analysis of profound and widely encountered concepts
such as meaning, truth, knowledge, goodness, and the mind. This volume is a
vital resource for anyone interested in analytic philosophy.
Excerpt: Though analytic philosophy was practiced by Plato
and reinvigorated in the modern era by Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes among
others. we are concerned with it only in its twentieth-century forms. As such.
it was revived in two centers. Germany and England. In Germany. Gottlob Frege
was exploring the foundations of mathematics and logic. His efforts introduced
new standards of rigor that made their way into analytic philosophy generally.
through the work of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. His discussions of
the nature of language and reasoning have also become powerful tools in the
hands of later philosophers. Among Frege's many books and articles, the
Grundgesetze, Begriffsschrilt."On Sense and Reference" ("Uber Sinn and
Bedeulung," 1892) and "'Thoughts" ("Gedanken," 1918) stand out as especially
significant.
During about the same period in England, G. E. Moore led
the way in opposing the then-dominant philosophy of British idealism. While "The
Nature of Judgment" is an early criticism of a point in E. H. Bradley's Logic.
the locus classicus of British analytic philosophy is likely "The Refutation of
Idealism" (1901). a criticism of the formula esse est percipi ("to be is to be
perceived"). A crucial part of that argument is Moore's claim that the concept
of the sensation of yellow contains two parts: the sensation that is unique to
each person and the yellowness that can be perceived by many people. Even when
idealists conceded that there was some kind of duality here they insisted on a
kind of inseparability.
To use a general name for the kind of analytic philosophy
practiced during the first half of the twentieth century, initially in Great
Britain and German-speaking countries, and later in North America. Australia,
and New Zealand. "Conceptual analysis" aims at breaking down complex concepts
into their simpler components. Successive analyses performed on complex
concepts would yield simpler concepts. According to Moore, the process might
lead ultimately to simple concepts, of which no further analysis could be given.
The designation "conceptual" was supposed to distinguish the philosophical
activity from various analyses applied to nonconceptual objects. Physics was
famous in the twentieth century for breaking down atoms into protons, neutrons,
and electrons, and these subatomic particles into an array of more exotic
components. And analytic chemistry aims at determining chemical compositions.
The analogy between philosophy and science inspired the name "logical atomism,"
a theory that flourished between
1920 and 1910. Both Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell
maintained that there must be simple, unanalyzable objects at the fundamental
level of reality. Wittgenstein thought that the simples existed independently of
human experience. Russell that they existed only for as long as one's attention
was fixed on them.
Notwithstanding the analogy between scientific and
philosophical analysis. most philosophers in the first half of the twentieth
century maintained that philosophy was very different from science. In his 'Ira(
talus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Wittgenstein wrote: "Philosophy is not one of
the natural sciences. (The word 'philosophy' must mean something whose place is
above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.). This conveniently left
open which was superior.
But if there is anything constant in analytic philosophy.
it is change, and the opposite view of the relation between science and
philosophy has dominated the second half of the century. Largely owing to the
influence of VV. V. Quine. many philosophers have come to believe that
philosophy is continuous with science. Yesterday's heresy is today's orthodoxy.
Whichever view is correct. the division between the philosophical analysis of
concepts and the nonphilosophical scientific analysis of nonconceptual objects
should perhaps not be taken too strictly. Concepts and hence philosophy would be
of no use if they did not make contact with the nonconceptual world. In
addition, science uses concepts. many of which may he among the most fundamental
of reality. To paraphrase Kant, perceptions without concepts are blind: concepts
without perceptions are empty.
Overlapping with the latter period of logical atomism is
logical positivism. which may be dated from Moritz Schlick's founding of the
Vienna Circle in 1924. One of its principal doctrines was that science is a
unity: and one of its principal projects was to show how to translate all
meaningful language into scientific language. in other words. to reduce
meaningful nonscientific language to scientific language. This project cannot be
successful unless something distinguishes meaningful from nonmeaningful
expressions. A. J. Ayer probably devoted more energy and displayed more
ingenuity in trying to formulate a criterion of meaningfulness than anyone else.
His first effort was presented in Language, Truth and Logic (1936). The book
that became the most widely known statement of logical positivism and which
introduced that philosophy to the anglophone public. The basic idea is that a
sentence is meaningful if and only if it is either analytic (or contradictory)
or empirically verifiable. Various objections were raised to this. and to every
revision of this criterion. Part of the problem was the status of the criterion
itself. Either it would be analytic and hence vacuous. or it would be empirical
but then not completely confirmed. Logical positivism had been dead for some
time when it was buried by Carl G. Hempels "Problems and Changes in the
Empiricist Criterion of Meaning") I950) and W. V. Quine's "Two Dogmas of
Empiricism" (1951 ). Nevertheless. Ayer and others never abandoned the spirit of
verifiability.
What had already begun to take the place of logical
positivism in the 1 940s was ordinary-language philosophy, one strand of which
emanated from Cambridge in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. the other from
Oxford. One of Wittgenstein's motivating beliefs was that philosophy creates
its own problems, and that means that they are not genuine problems at all. The
confusion arises from philosophers' misuse of ordinary words. They take words
out of their ordinary context, the only context in which they have meaning, use
them philosophically, and thereby discover anomalies with the displaced concepts
expressed by these words: For philosophical problems arise when language goes on
holiday." Wittgenstein questioned many of the assumptions of analytic
philosophy — from the nature and necessity of analysis to the nature of language
— in a discursive and dialectical style so inimitable that it was as if Ludwig
were talking to Wittgenstein. Ills oracular aphorisms, such as "Don't ask for
the meaning, ask for the use" and "To understand a sentence is to understand a
language" stimulated a variety of reactions, from the Fregean interpretations of
Peter Geach and Michael Dummett. to the holism of Quine and Donald Davidson, to
the deconstructivist approaches of O. K. Bouwsma and D. Z. Phillips.
The other strand of ordinary-language philosophy came from
Oxford. under the leadership of Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin. These
philosophers, more numerous than the Cambridge group (Antony Flew. J.O. UUrmson,
and G. J. Warnock. deserve to be mentioned), did not so much think that there
were no philosophical problems as say that philosophical problems could be
solved through the careful analysis of the distinctions inherent in ordinary
language. The purpose of Austin's "Ifs and Cans" and "A Plea for Excuses" was to
elucidate the problem of freedom and determinism, which arose from his
understanding of Aristotle (see his Philosophical Papers, 2nd edition, p. 180).
He said that while ordinary language was not the last word in philosophy, it was
the first. Ile certainly was not opposed to philosophers developing theories.
Austin, who had been a closet logical positivist according
to A. J. Ayer, coined the term "performative utterance" as part of his
refutation of the central thesis of logical positivism, namely, that all
sentences that were cognitively meaningful were either true or false. Austin
pointed out that some straightforwardly meaningful sentences. sentences that
did not contain suspicious words like "beautiful," "good." or "God." were not
the kind of sentences that could have a truth-value: "I bequeath my watch to my
brother," "I christen this ship the Queen Elizabeth Il," and "I bet ten dollars
that Cleveland wins the pennant." Although the concept of performatives did the
work it was designed to do. the distinction between performatives and
"constatives" (roughly. statements) could not be sustained: and Austin replaced
that distinction with another. between locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary acts. In the 1960s, John Searle, who was trained at Oxford by
ordinary-language philosophers. showed that Austin's latter theory was itself
inadequate and replaced it with his own fully-developed theory in Speech its
(1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979).
By the late 1960s ordinary language had lost its dominance.
Some of the Oxford philosophers were instrumental in its demise. Searle, as
mentioned developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts and then used it as
inspiration for foundational work on the nature of intentionality and the social
world. One of his teachers and a colleague of Austin's. H. P.Grice, developed
his own theory of language use, a theory complementary in many ways to
Searle's.
A more dramatic cause of the demise of ordinary language
philosophy is attributable to one of its chief practitioners. P. Strawson. In
Individuals (1959), he resurrected metaphysics. an area of philosophy that was
considered unacceptable by logical positivism. Strawson distinguished between
"stipulative" (bad) metaphysics and "descriptive" (good) metaphysics. His
descriptive project to lay "bare the most general features of our conceptual
structure," was supposed to differ from logical or conceptual analysis only "in
scope and generality." At almost the same time the American W. V. Quine
published Word and Object (1960). Ills approach differed from Strawson's
primarily in emphasizing the genesis of the most general concepts and in
accommodating itself explicitly to empirical psychology and physics.
Once metaphysics had been made respectable again.
philosophers felt more comfortable pursuing a large variety of problems in a
variety of ways. Metaphysical systems became more elaborate when Saul Kripke
used possible worlds to prove theorems about modal logic. Some subsequent
positions can even be thought outlandish, such as David Lewis's view that every
possible world exist, and exists in the same sense our own world does —
outlandish but not disreputable. Some disciplines that had been relatively
neglected between 1910 and 1960 were reinvigorated, for example, ethics and
political philosophy by John Rawls. most notably in A Theory of Justice (1971);
and some questions, such as the meaning of life, were mulled over by, for
example, Thomas Nagel in an analytically respectable way. Perhaps two of the
most salient characteristics of the period from 1970 onwards were first. the
interest of analytic philosophers in the foundations of empirical sciences, from
physics through biology to psychology, and second, their use of and contribution
to artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Analysis was largely abandoned
and replaced by a desire for philosophical doctrines that were variously more
intelligible or intellectually respectable to physicists. logicians. or
psychologists. This would explain the large presence of philosophers in
cognitive science, linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of science: but has
perhaps also led to what Searle has called "the rediscovery of the mind" in a
book by that name.
There were other consequences of the revival of
metaphysics. Some philosophers, respected for their work as early as the 1950s,
for example Roderick Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars, but not closely associated
with any of the schools we have mentioned, grew in significance. Some
philosophers turned to the history of modern philosophy, notably, Strawson and
Jonathan Bennett on Kant. Bennett on Locke Berkeley and Hume. and Bernard
Williams and Margaret Wilson on Descartes. Some philosophers who became
important in the last quarter of the twentieth century. notably Richard Rorty.
declared analytic philosophy misconceived. bankrupt, or similarly deficient. In
making their position clear and in aiming at cogency. they are analytic
philosophers in spite of themselves.
It is likely less helpful to talk about one or another
movement in philosophy after 1965. No one method or doctrine dominated.
Sometimes a philosopher championing a view became its most significant critic or
at least moved on to something quite different paradigmatically Hilary Putnam.
What can be said about the last quarter of the twentieth century is that the
original conception of analysis and most of its presuppositions were abandoned
by almost all analytic philosophers. Gone is the assumption t hat concepts of
philosophical, importance are often composed of simpler sharply-defined
concepts. Quine's arguments that there is no principled distinction between
analytic and synthetic statements is just a special case of the broader thesis
that language and hence thought are essentially indeterminate.
We have been explaining and illustrating analytic
philosophy in the last century without defining it. It probably defies
definition since it is not a set of doctrines and not restricted in its subject
matter. It is more like a method, a way of dealing with a problem. but in fact
not one method but many that bear a family resemblance to each other.
Once when Gilbert Harman was asked, "What is analytic
philosophy he said (tongue firmly in cheek). 'Analytic philosophy is who you
have lunch with." In general. analytic philosophy has become highly pluralistic
and in many ways hardly resembles what was done in the first half of the
century. The refectory of analytic philosophy is not as clubby as it once was.
Many more people sit at the table, and many more different kinds of food,
prepared in more ways. are served. Perhaps what makes current analytic
philosophers analytic philosophers is a counterfactual: they would have done
philosophy the way Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein did it if they had been
doing philosophy-when Moore, Russell. and Wittgenstein were. The multiplicity
of analytical styles is one reason for organizing the volume by individual
philosopher and not by theme.
Over forty of the greatest analytic philosophers of' the
last century are discussed in this volume. At least thirty of them, we believe,
would be on virtually any sensible list of forty outstanding analytic
philosophers. Many other philosophers have almost as good a claim to he included
in this volume. To name only some of those who are not alive, the following were
considered and finally, reluctantly, not included: Max Black. Gustav Bergmann,
Herbert Feigl. Paul Feyerabend. Gareth Evans, C. I. Lewis, J. L. Mackie, Ernest
Nagel, H. H. Price. H. A. Prichard. A. N. Prior. Hans Reichenbach. Moritz
Schlick. Gregory Vlastos, Friedrich Waismann, and John Wisdom.
Some philosophers were excluded because they do not fit
squarely within the tradition of analytic philosophy as ordinarily understood:
John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, John Cook Wilson, and,
ironically. Alfred North Whitehead, co-author with Russell of one of the
century's greatest works of logic, Principia Mathematica.
While the reputations of some of the philosophers included
are as high as they ever were, e.g. Frege and Russell. those of others have
declined, not always justifiably, for example those of C. D. Broad and Rudolf
Carnap. In making our decisions we have tried not to be prejudiced either for or
against any school, method, or time period, but to reflect the relative
importance of various philosophers over the entire twentieth century.
We know that our selection will be controversial. even
though it was influenced by the judgments of many colleagues. A referee of our
proposal wrote that the editors seem to "aim at enraging the reader." Most
analytic philosophers will believe that some other list of people would have
been better. We are sympathetic. Neither of us completely agrees with the final
selection. Each believes that at least three other philosophers have a better
claim to he included than some that were. In order to preserve "plausible
deniability." we have agreed not to comment further on the lists in any written
form, and not to appear together at any public gathering of' philosophers for
five years.
Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology edited by A. P.
Martinich, David Sosa (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies: Blackwell
Publishers) This substantial anthology comprises the most comprehensive and
authoritative collection of readings in analytic philosophy of the twentieth
century. It provides a survey and analysis of the key issues, figures and
concepts.
The volume is divided into seven sections: philosophy of
language, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, free will and personal
identity, ethics, and methodology. It includes the most familiar texts of the
analytic tradition, as well as several others that are less often anthologized.
Several articles are logically related to each other. For example, Moore's Four
Forms of Skepticism, appears together with selections from Wittgenstein's On
Certainty; Langford's discussion of the paradox of analysis and Moore's reply
are both included; and Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism is paired with Grice and
Strawson's In Defense of a Dogma.
Analytic philosophy in the twentieth century is not easily
defined by doctrine or method. Different philosophers of the period have held
opposed positions and employed various methods, difficult to enumerate or to
describe. Today, mans methods overlap. Notwithstanding the nay-sayers who have
declared analytic philosophy (or even more indiscriminately, philosophy in
general) dead, it is flourishing.
Analytic philosophy would be easier to define if it had
kept to its early firm in Great Britain at the beginning of the century.
Analysis, as it was originally understood, aimed at breaking down complex
concepts into their simpler constituents, just as chemical analysis aimed at
breaking down complex substances into simpler ones. For example, the concept of
knowledge was decomposed into the concepts of truth, belief, and justification;
knowledge was thus analyzed as justified true belief. Later, under the influence
of Rudolf Carnap, explicit analyses were supposed to take the form of finding
necessary and sufficient conditions for predicates or "open" sentences.
Philosophers thought for decades that this analysis of knowledge was correct as
far as it went. However, they were not completely satisfied because the relevant
notion of justification was not clear. Consequently, for decades philosophers
worked on the concept of justification.
In 1963 Edmund Gettier caused a major stir in epistemology
by giving some examples in which a person would have satisfied all the specified
conditions for knowing something, but would not really know it. Confronted with
a counterexample to the traditional analysis of knowledge, philosophers realized
that they had been wrong about the nature of knowledge; this inspired them to
new analyses. Indeed, years earlier Bertrand Russell had given an example that
could have been turned to similar effect; see, for example, The Problems of
Philosophy (1912), chapter 13; but it was only with Gettier that philosophy
appreciated the inadequacy of the traditional analysis.
Returning to its origins in Great Britain early m the
twentieth century, analytic philosophy, in the hands of G. L. Moore, was a
challenge to British Idealism. Ile defended the mind-independence of the
external world, the multiplicity of the world as against the indivisible unity
of the mind, and the fundamentality of' common-sense beliefs. Because Moore and
Russell believed in multiple ultimately - irreducible objects, they thought of
themselves as atomists, but because they were philosophers rather than
physicists, Russell coined the term "Logical Atomism" for their general
philosophy.
One of the greatest works of logical atomism was Ludwig
Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, of which the main positions are
presented in entry II). (Sec also entry 9.)
'Though so far we have been discussing how analytic
philosophy sprung up in English-speaking countries, we should emphasize that
German-speaking countries represent a second font. ("Anglo-Germanic" philosophy
might he less misleading than the standard "Anglo-American"; Michael Dunnnett
has plugged "Anglo-Austrian" as better representing the significance of
philosophers such as Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, and -AIexius Meinong.)
Near the end of the nineteenth century, Gottlub Frege, a mathematician,
revolutionized formal logic. This led him to study the foundations of language
and thought (sec entry 1). In his 1918 article, "Thought" (entry 2), Frege
introduced many of the standard conceptual tools and distinctions analytic
philosophers have used since. His most famous student was Carnap, who emigrated
to the United States to escape political oppression in Germany. Other brilliant
philosophers Carl Hempel (sec selection 19) is another notable example - also
left Germany and later settled in the United States.
Beginning with the powerful effects of Frege on Russell,
and then of the latter on the Austrian-born Wittgenstein, the
cross-fertilization of German and English philosophy was broad and deeply
important. To cite another example, Moritz Schlick organized in Vienna a group
("the Vienna Circle"), consisting mostly of scientists turned philosophers. Both
A. J. Ayer, a brilliant young Englishman, and W. V. Quine, a brilliant young
American, attended their discussions. When Ayer returned to England, he wrote
Language, Truth, and Logic, the most famous presentation of their philosophy:
logical positivism (entry 40; sec also 41). ("Positivism" comes from the phrase
"empirical positivism," which was a nineteenth-century scientism promoted by
Auguste Comte.)
No less impressed with the Vienna Circle than was Ayer',
Quine turned his thought in a different direction when he returned to the United
States. While he continued his work on formal logic, Quine importantly attacked
what he called ,Iwo dogmas of empiricism" (entry 43; see also 44), which he saw
as dogmas of logical positivism. The first dogma is that there is a significant
distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths. The second dogma is
that "each meaningful statement is equivalent to sonic logical construct upon
terms which refer to immediate experience." Quine's attack was on the
foundations of conceptual analysis. If he is right that there is no principled
distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, then analysis is
hopeless.
Quine's dissatisfaction with the empiricism of the logical
positivists was part of a ways of critical interest from across the Atlantic, a
wave that included Nelson Goodman and Morton White. At roughly the same time,
two other schools, in England, were reflecting critically on positivist
positions. One, at Oxford and led by Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin, thought that
the criterion for meaningfulness dictated by the logical Positivists was too
confining. In "Performative Uttrrances" and most famously in How To Do Things
with Words, Austin showed that ordinary sentences like "I christen thee the
Queen Elizabeth," and "I promise to go to the store" are clearly cognitively
meaningful, but do not pass the logical positivists' test for meaningfulness.
This insight eventually led to the construction of speech-act theory, invented
by Austin but perfected by John Searle and H. P. Grice (entry 5).
In addition, Austin and his hand of "ordinary-language"
philosophers believed that philosophical progress could be made by group
investigation into the distinctions implicit in ordinary language (entry 42). In
his own way, Gilbert Ryle investigated the scope and limits of ordinary language
in order to chart the topography of human concepts; he did conceptual geography
(sec also his The Concept of Mind.
A second English school, headquartered in Cambridge (with
an important outpost in Ithaca, New York) was led by Wittgenstein (selections 28
and 46 represent this group). He emphasized that meaning' is an
abstraction from speaking' (or, more generally, from the "use" of language) and
that speaking was inextricably linked to a non-linguistic context.
Wittgenstein's work challenged basic assumptions concerning relations between
mind, language, and the world, which lay at the root of almost all the analytic
philosophy that had come before (including his own earlier work; CC entries 10
and 46).
By 1970s, logical atomism, logical positivism, and
Ordinary-language philosophy had had their day. At least three factors
contributed to the decline. One was that the questions posed and the answers
proffered were thought by their critics to be trivial. Second, some powerful new
technical devices, notably possible-world semantics, promised to shed new light
on substantive philosophical problems. Third, new philosophical theories, for
exsample, causal theories of knowledge, perception, and language, not beholden
to ordinary language or to science, were developed.
No one, two, or three ways of doing philosophy and no small
class of problems dominated the last quarter century. A thousand philosophical
flowers have bloomed. Metaphysics was reinvigorated by Strawson and by Chisholm
(entries 11 and 17), ethics and political philosophy by John Rawls and others
(entries 35 -7), philosophy of mind by many (entries 22 -7).
Moreover, even the variety of philosophical work included
in this volume does not fully represent all that analytic philosophy) has to
offer. We have been unable to include work by Gustav Bergmann, for example, or
by G. von Wright or other Scandinavian philosophers, by Gilbert Ryle, Frank
Ramsey, or C. D. Broad. And the list goes on (Tarski, Godel, Church). Difficult
choices were required. (Any damage is partly remedied, concept, encompassing a
range of methods and doctrines. Many of these methods and doctrines bear a
family resemblance to each other because they have the same ancestors; and,
while analytic philosophy of the last quarter century encompasses many deep
disagreements, it is also not an unhappy family, and it is creative and diverse.
This diversity makes it difficult to summarize or
characterize philosophy today. Perhaps also we are too close to it in time to he
able to see it clearly. However, what appears to us to be the case, if only as
through a glass darkly, is a more widespread scientism. Although logical atomism
and logical positivism were sympathetic to science, very little science actually
appeared in the works of their adherents. Scientific results have become more
important to philosophy, and philosophy overlaps with science now more than it
has since the seventeenth century.
Inquiries
into Truth and Interpretation
by Donald Davidson (Oxford University Press) The eighteen essays in this
collection address the question of what it is for words to mean what they do.
Davidson covers such topics as the relation between theories of truth and
theories of meaning, translation, quotation, belief, radical interpretation,
reference, metaphor, and communication. Excellent book. A must read for anyone
interested in philosophy of language. This book contains all of Davidson's
important articles concerning philosophy of language. A classic in analytical
argument.
Aspects of Reason by Paul Grice, edited with introduction Richard Warner
(Oxford University Press) Reasons and reasoning are central to the work
of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late
twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at
the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics;
Aspects o f Reason is the long‑awaited publication of those lectures.
The focal point is an investigation of practical necessity
(the necessity of `I must not torture' or `I must go to law school' for
example). Grice contends that practical necessities are established by
derivation; they are necessary because they are derivable.
Aspects of Reason sets this claim in the context of an account of
reasons and reasoning. This allows Grice to defend his treatment of necessity
against obvious objections, also revealing how the construction of explicit
derivations can play a central role in explaining as well as justifying thought
and action. Grice was still working on Aspects of Reason during the last years
of his life; unpolished as it is, the book provides an intimate glimpse into the
workings of his mind. This rich and subtle work, powerfully evocative of its
author, will refresh and illuminate many areas of contemporary philosophy.
Paul Grice (1913‑1988) was Fellow of St John's College,
Oxford, and, until his retirement in 1980, Professor of Philosophy in the
University of California, Berkeley.
Richard Warner is Professor of Law at Chicago‑Kent College of Law. He was
previously Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the
University of Southern California.
Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy
edited by Juliet Floyd and Sanford Shieh
(Oxford University Press) this collections of essays on the historical
significance of the analytic style of argument and inquiry that dominated
Angelo-American professional philosophy though the 20th
century is sure to find a wide audience. Many of the classic feuds and concerns
that have occurred in this period are written about by many of the participants
themselves. The essays are arranged chronologically and though in no way is it
comprehensive or analytical in its accounts, it does make some droll nod to
narrative and not without some slight humor, as the excesses are admitted and as
is some serious rhetorical short sightedness.
Among contemporary philosophers there is a growing interest in recounting the
history of philosophy in the twentieth century. Those who discuss what is more
or less loosely called "analytic philosophy"-among them some who reject the
methods of analysis outright-are increasingly engaged in attempting to
delineate the origins and significance of the analytic tradition.
Future Pasts is meant to be a contribution to the growing historical
consciousness of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. More than that,
however, the decision to bring together these particular essays stems from the
editors' conception of present difficulties facing the historiography of recent
philosophy. Both partisans and critics-such as Richard Rorty--of what is called
"analytic philosophy" assume that it is definable by a small number of
questions, theories, principles, or concepts.
Future Pasts calls into doubt these often unquestioned, even
unconscious, assumptions about the history of recent philosophy.
Containing twenty-one previously unpublished articles by
such luminaries as W. V. Quine, John Rawls, Stanley Cavell, Warren Goldfarb,
Hilary Putnam, and others, this volume represents a new approach to the history
of philosophy as well as an exciting and engaging portrait of twentieth-century
analytic philosophy.
A
Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger by Michael Friedman
(Open Court) Philosophy is deeply divided between two hostile camps: analytic
philosophy (dominant in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries) and
continental philosophy (dominant in Germany and France). In this volume,
Friedman explores the common origin of analytic and continental philosophy,
showing how social and political events intertwined and influenced philosophy
during the early twentieth-century.
Friedman gives a general overview of the
philosophical issues of the period, paying special attention to the
relationships among three key twentieth-century philosophers: Rudolf Carnap,
Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. Already polarized by their philosophical
disagreements, the approaches of Carnap and Heidegger-now practiced largely in
isolation from one another-were further split apart by the rise of Naziism and
the resulting emigration of all influential German-speaking philosophers except
for Heidegger. While the radical directions taken by Carnap (analytic
philosophy) and Heidegger (post-modernism) have been hugely influential,
Friedman enters a plea on behalf of Cassirer's "middle way" as a bridge between
the dead ends now reached in both analytic and continental philosophy.
Intuitions As Evidence by
Joel Pust (Studies in Philosophy: Garland) is concerned with the role of
intuitions in the justification of philosophical theory. The author begins by
demonstrating how contemporary philosophers, whether engaged in case-driven
analysis or seeking reflective equilibrium, rely on intuitions as evidence for
their theories. The author then provides an account of the nature of
philosophical intuitions and distinguishes them from other psychological states.
Finally, the author defends the use of intuitions as evidence by demonstrating
that arguments for skepticism about their evidential value are either
self-defeating or guilty of arbitrary and unjustified partiality towards
non-intuitive modes of knowledge.
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