A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy From Russell to Rawls

by Schwartz, Stephen P.

• ISBN13: 9780470672075
• ISBN10: 0470672072
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-06-05
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls presents a comprehensive overview of the historical development of all major aspects of analytic philosophy, the dominant Anglo-American philosophical tradition in the twentieth century. Features coverage of all the major subject areas and figures in analytic philosophy - including Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Putnam, and many others Contains explanatory background material to help make clear technical philosophical concepts Includes listings of suggested further readings Written in a clear, direct style that presupposes little previous knowledge of philosophy

Author Biography

Stephen P. Schwartz is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College, New York. He has published numerous articles in leading analytic philosophy journals.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Introduction: What is Analytic Philosophy?	p. 1
Leading Analytic Philosophers	p. 6
Russell and Moore	p. 8
Empiricism, Mathematics, and Symbolic Logic	p. 8
Logicism	p. 12
Russell on Definite Descriptions	p. 20
G. E. Moore's Philosophy of Common Sense	p. 27
Moore and Russell on Sense Data	p. 30
Moore's and Russell's Anti-Hegelianism	p. 33
Summary	p. 38
Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and Logical Positivism	p. 46
Introduction	p. 46
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus	p. 48
Historical Note: The Vienna Circle and their Allies	p. 58
The Elimination of Metaphysics and the Logical Positivist Program	p. 59
The Demise of the Vienna Circle	p. 68
The Influence of the Logical Positivists	p. 69
Responses to Logical Positivism: Quine, Kuhn, and American Pragmatism	p. 76
Introduction	p. 76
The Demise of the Verifiability Criterion of Meaningfulness	p. 78
Quine's Rejection of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction	p. 82
Quinean Empiricism without the Dogmas	p. 86
American Pragmatists after Quine: Nelson Goodman, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam	p. 101
Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy and Later Wittgenstein	p. 119
Introduction	p. 119
The Attack on Formalism - Strawson and Ryle	p. 124
Philosophy of Language - Austin and Wittgenstein	p. 128
Philosophy of Mind - Ryle, Strawson, and Wittgenstein	p. 138
The Rejection of Sense Data Theory	p. 147
The Legacy of Ordinary Language Philosophy	p. 153
Responses to Ordinary Language Philosophy: Logic, Language, and Mind	p. 160
Formal Logic and Philosophy of Language	p. 161
Gödel and Tarski	p. 161
Davidson	p. 166
Grice	p. 174
Carnap - Meaning and Necessity	p. 178
Chomsky	p. 180
Philosophy of Mind	p. 183
Functionalism	p. 183
Objections to Functionalism - Bats and the Chinese Room	p. 188
Anomalous Monism	p. 192
The Problem of Mental Causation	p. 194
The Rebirth of Metaphysics	p. 204
Modal Logic	p. 204
Possible Worlds	p. 212
Problems with the Canonical Conception of Possible Worlds	p. 216
Transworld Identity and Identification	p. 223
The Modal Version of the Ontological Argument	p. 229
Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds: Kripke, Putnam, and Donnellan	p. 239
Introduction	p. 239
The Traditional Theory of Meaning and Reference	p. 240
Kripke's and Donnellan's Criticism of the Traditional Theory: Names and Descriptions	p. 243
Natural Kind Terms	p. 247
Problems for the New Theory of Reference	p. 253
Applications of the New Theory of Reference to the Philosophy of Mind	p. 257
The Social, Cultural, and Institutional Basis of Meaning and Reference	p. 260
Ethics and Metaethics in the Analytic Tradition	p. 264
Introduction	p. 264
G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica	p. 266
The Non-Cognitivism of C. L. Stevenson	p. 269
The Universal Prescriptivism of R. M. Hare	p. 272
The Return to Substantive Ethics	p. 275
Questioning the Fact/Value Divide	p. 278
Peter Singer and Animal Liberation	p. 281
John Rawls' Theory of Justice	p. 285
Epilogue: Analytic Philosophy Today and Tomorrow	p. 299
Analytic Philosophy since 1980	p. 299
What is the Future of Analytic Philosophy?	p. 321
References	p. 327
Index	p. 337
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