Philosophical Analysis In The Twentieth Century

by Soames, Scott

• ISBN13: 9780691122441
• ISBN10: 069112244X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-10
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

This is a major, wide-ranging history of analytic philosophy since 1900, told by one of the tradition's leading contemporary figures. The first volume takes the story from 1900 to mid-century. The second brings the history up to date. As Scott Soames tells it, the story of analytic philosophy is one of great but uneven progress, with leading thinkers making important advances toward solving the tradition's core problems. Though no broad philosophical position ever achieved lasting dominance, Soames argues that two methodological developments have, over time, remade the philosophical landscape. These are (1) analytic philosophers' hard-won success in understanding, and distinguishing the notions of logical truth, a priori truth, and necessary truth, and (2) gradual acceptance of the idea that philosophical speculation must be grounded in sound prephilosophical thought. Though Soames views this history in a positive light, he also illustrates the difficulties, false starts, and disappointments endured along the way. As he engages with the work of his predecessors and contemporaries--from Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein to Donald Davidson and Saul Kripke--he seeks to highlight their accomplishments while also pinpointing their shortcomings, especially where their perspectives were limited by an incomplete grasp of matters that have now become clear. Soames himself has been at the center of some of the tradition's most important debates, and throughout writes with exceptional ease about its often complex ideas. His gift for clear exposition makes the history as accessible to advanced undergraduates as it will be important to scholars. Despite its centrality to philosophy in the English-speaking world, the analytic tradition in philosophy has had very few synthetic histories. This will be the benchmark against which all future accounts will be measured.

Author Biography

Scott Soames is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	ix
INTRODUCTION TO THE TWO VOLUMES	xi
PART ONE: G.E. MOORE ON ETHICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS	1	(90)
CHAPTER 1 Common Sense and Philosophical Analysis	3	(9)
CHAPTER 2 Moore on Skepticism, Perception, and Knowledge	12	(22)
CHAPTER 3 Moore on Goodness and the Foundations of Ethics	34	(37)
CHAPTER 4 The Legacies and Lost Opportunities of Moore's Ethics	71	(18)
Suggested Further Reading	89	(2)
PART TWO: BERTRAND RUSSELL ON LOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS	91	(104)
CHAPTER 5 Logical Form, Grammatical Form, and the Theory of Descriptions	93	(39)
CHAPTER 6 Logic and Mathematics: The Logicist Reduction	132	(33)
CHAPTER 7 Logical Constructions and the External World	165	(17)
CHAPTER 8 Russell's Logical Atomism	182	(12)
Suggested Further Reading	194	(1)
PART THREE: LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS	195	(60)
CHAPTER 9 The Metaphysics of the Tractatus	197	(17)
CHAPTER 10 Meaning, Truth, and Logic in the Tractatus	214	(20)
CHAPTER 11 The Tractarian Test of Intelligibility and Its Consequences	234	(20)
Suggested Further Reading	254	(1)
PART FOUR LOGICAL POSITIVISM, EMOTIVISM, AND ETHICS	255	(94)
CHAPTER 12 The Logical Positivists on Necessity and Apriori Knowledge	257	(14)
CHAPTER 13 The Rise and Fall of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning	271	(29)
CHAPTER 14 Emotivism and Its Critics	300	(20)
CHAPTER 15 Normative Ethics in the Era of Emotivism: The Anticonsequentialism of Sir David Ross	320	(26)
Suggested Further Reading	346	(3)
PART FIVE: THE POST-POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE OF THE EARLY W.V. QUINE	349	(60)
CHAPTER 16 The Analytic and the Synthetic, the Necessary and the Possible, the Apriori and the Aposteriori	351	(27)
CHAPTER 17 Meaning and Holistic Verificationism	378	(28)
Suggested Further Reading	406	(3)
Index	409