Contemporary Analytic Philosophy Core Readings

by Baillie, James

• ISBN13: 9780130990686
• ISBN10: 013099068X
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-17
• Publisher: Pearson
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

This self-contained anthology collects some of the most influential primary source contributions to contemporary analytic philosophy, together with introductions and commentaries for each selection. It traces the development of a few central themes in analytic philosophy, in sufficient detailfrom philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical logic.Frege, Russell, Moore. Wittgenstein. Logical Empiricism. Ordinary Language Philosophy. Quine. Truth, Meaning, and Interpretation. Reference and Essence.For anyone interested in Analytic Philosophy.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Frege, Russell, Moore	1	(76)
Introduction to Gottlob Frege	1	(7)
``Sense and Reference,''	8	(16)
Gottlob Frege
Introduction to Bertrand Russell	24	(7)
``On Denoting,''	31	(11)
Bertrand Russell
Selections from The Philosophy of Logical Atomism	42	(14)
Bertrand Russell
Introduction to G.E. Moore	56	(5)
``Proof of an External World,''	61	(16)
G.E. Moore
Wittgenstein	77	(54)
Introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein	77	(12)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (abridged)	89	(21)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Selections from Philosophical Investigations	110	(21)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logical Empiricism	131	(55)
Introduction to Logical Empiricism	131	(10)
``The Foundations of Knowledge,''	141	(14)
Moritz Schlick
``The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,''	155	(17)
Rudolf Carnap
``Empiricism, Semantics, Ontology,''	172	(14)
Rudolf Carnap
Ordinary Language Philosophy	186	(76)
Introduction to Gilbert Ryle	186	(5)
``Knowing How and Knowing That,''	191	(10)
Gilbert Ryle
Introduction to J.L. Austin	201	(6)
Selections from Sense and Sensibilia	207	(18)
J .L. Austin
Introduction to P.F. Strawson	225	(5)
``On Referring,''	230	(19)
P.F. Strawson
Introduction to H.P. Grice	249	(5)
``Meaning,''	254	(8)
H.P. Grice
Quine	262	(62)
Introduction to W.V. Quine	262	(10)
``Two Dogmas of Empiricism,''	272	(18)
W.V. Quine
``In Defense of a Dogma,''	290	(12)
H.P. Grice
P.F. Strawson
``Ontological Relativity,''	302	(22)
W.V. Quine
Truth, Meaning, and Interpretation	324	(57)
Introduction to Alfred Tarski	324	(6)
``The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics,''	330	(17)
Alfred Tarski
Introduction to Donald Davidson	347	(7)
``Truth and Meaning,''	354	(15)
Donald Davidson
``Radical Interpretation,''	369	(12)
Donald Davidson
Reference and Essence	381	(1)
Introduction to Saul Kripke	381	(7)
``Identity and Necessity,''	388	(24)
Saul Kripke
Introduction to Externalism	412	(8)
``Meaning and Reference,''	420	(10)
Hilary Putnam
Selections from ``Individualism and the Mental,''	430
Tyler Burge

Excerpts

This anthology collects some of the most important contributions to contemporary analytic philosophy. Both "contemporary" and "analytic" can be given contrastive definitions. That is, I mean "contemporary" as opposed to "modern," and thus my selections are taken from the past century or so. I mean "analytic" as distinct from "continental" philosophy, though with some caveats. First, I do not want this anthology to contribute to the split between philosophy in English-speaking countries and elsewhere. This antagonism has decreased in the past couple of decades to mutual benefit. Second, some of the greatest analytic philosophers were from Europe, particularly Austria and Germany, and need to be understood against a background of philosophical activity that includes continental post-Kantian philosophy. As Michael Dummett recently remarked, "The sources of analytical philosophy were the writings of philosophers who wrote, principally or exclusively, in the German language; and this would have remained obvious to everyone had it not been for the plague of Nazism which drove so many German-speaking philosophers across the Atlantic" (1993, p. ix). The idea of analytic philosophy clearly rests on some notion of analysis.Analysis consists of breaking down a complex system into its component parts, thereby making the underlying elements and the relations between them explicit. The method of analysis was modeled on chemical analysis, whereby a compound decomposes into its ultimate constituents. The properties of the compound are explained in terms of its elements and their interrelations. The aim of philosophical analysis was to become clear about what was being said or thought. The new logic provided a systematic means for doing this, providing a perspicuous representation of sentences and the patterns of inference to and from each one. This, it was hoped, would prevent wooly speculation, and reveal grand metaphysical theories to be built on sand. While the notion of analysis was prevalent from the beginnings of the movement, the specific expression "analytic (or analytical) philosophy" entered common usage only in the 1950s. In other words, the classification is virtually retroactive, since by that time any substantive or methodological unity had long dispersed into a wide variety of approaches. We can identify several roots of what we now regard as the analytic tradition. First, in Germany, there was the rejection of psychologism by Gottlob Frege, as summarized in his dictum, "Always separate the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective:" That is, by making a strict distinction between logic on the one hand, and epistemology and psychology on the other, he separated the act of thinking from the content of thoughts themselves. Philosophy is concerned only with the latter. Second, in England, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell urged a return to the method of analysis in place of the dialectical methods of the then dominant Absolute Idealists such as F.H. Bradley and J.M.E. McTaggart (whose middle initial "M," incidentally, stood for "McTaggart"). Moore and Russell opposed "the dependence of the object of knowledge on the knower, the monism of the Absolute, the coherence theory of truth, the unreality of relations and the doctrine of internal relations" (Hacker 1998, p.15). Third, there was the development of formal logic and its application to natural languages, firstly by Frege and then by Russell. Frege''s criticisms of psychologism were allied to his new conception of logic as the systematic study of patterns of valid inference. Russell held that ordinary language disguised the true logical form of the propositions expressed, and that this was a major cause of philosophical error. Russell and Moore represent two sides of an ongoing tension in analytic philosophy in the first part of this century in that they disagree over the status of ordinary natural languages. Russell follows Frege in seeing natural languages as fundamentally flawed, being subject to vagueness and ambiguity. He believed that reliable philosophical results can be obtained only by devising a logically perfect language in which the implications of any sentence could be derived by a purely formal procedure. Moore, on the other hand, had no revisionary aims concerning ordinary language and saw it as an adequate tool for achieving philosophical results, providing it is used with care. While all philosophers in this anthology until Quine regarded some form of analysis as central to philosophical method, they differed over precisely what was being analyzed. Moore and Russell originally held that they were analyzing facts, that is, bits of reality. This was sometimes described as the analysis of propositions, and their constituent concepts, into their basic elements. By contrast, Wittgenstein''s Tractatusanalyzed sentences and thought contents as a means of revealing the structure of reality. The Positivists focused exclusively on the analysis of linguistic expressions without these metaphysical ambitions. However, despite these differences regarding what was being analyzed, all these philosophers regarded analysis as a reductiveenterprise, that of breaking up a complex into its simper constituent parts. The early Wittgenstein, and the Positivists following in his wake, established the view that philosophy and analysis were one and the same. Philosophy was therefore a method, not a subject matter. A strict distinction between philosophy and the sciences was thereby fixed. However, by the middle of the century, it had become apparent that most actual attempts at reductive analysis were failures. For example, the Positivists could not successfully formulate a reduction of statements about material objects to those concerning sense-data. Nor could their attempts to reduce discourse about mental states to talk about behavioral dispositions succeed. In the light of these failures, the reductive model of analysis came under scrutiny. Wittgenstein and the "ordinary language philosophers" of mid-century Oxford (represented in this anthology by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, RE Strawson, and H.P. Grice) developed nonreductive methods of analysis. The earlier reductive form of analysis can be seen as vertical, going down from complex to simpler levels, ending with unanalyzable conceptual "atoms:" By contrast, the new method was "connective analysis," to use Strawson''s expression. That is, the lateral relations between concepts were explored without any attempt to reduce one concept to another. Second, they attended to how words were actually used in concrete social contexts, investigating the "grammar," or conditions of appropriate usage, of philosophically problematic concepts. This emphasis on ordinary language appalled Russell, who thought that all that would be revealed by such methods was "the metaphysics of savages:" One point that all philosophers in this anthology until Quine agreed on, albeit for differing reasons, was a strict distinction between philosophy and all empirical disciplines. Prior to Quine, it was held that since philosophy consists of analysis, which is a purely a priori enterprise, philosophy is therefore fundamentally different from the sciences in both its method and its subject matter. This division rested on the assumption that a clear distinction could be given between truths solely due to facts about meanings, and those resting on the way the world is. Quine''s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction undermined a hard distinction between philosophy and empirical disciplines. Indeed, his distrust of intensional notions, and his denial of any objective fact of the matter about what words mean, afforded no room for analysis, at least in its reductive form. Many, particularly in the United States, now follow Quine in regarding philosophy as being continuousw