Exploring the ethical dimension of Wittgenstein's thought, Iczkovits challenges the view that Wittgenstein had a vision of language and subsequently a vision of ethics, showing how the two are integrated in his philosophical method, and allowing us to reframe traditional problems in moral philosophy considered as external to questions of meaning.

This book is a defence of the philosophy of common sense broadly in the spirit of Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore. It breaks new ground by drawing on the work of Aristotle, contemporary evolutionary biology and psychology, and historical studies on the origins of early modern philosophy. Part One offers new answers to the questions: What counts as a common sense belief? Why should common sense beliefs be considered default positions? And why is it that philosophers so frequently end up denying what we all know to be true? Part Two defends common sense beliefs from specific challenges from prominent philosophers on topics from metaphysics to ethics.

This book aids in the rehabilitation of the wrongfully deprecated work of William Parry, and is the only full-length investigation into Parry-type propositional logics. A central tenet of the monograph is that the sheer diversity of the contexts in which the mereological analogy emerges - its effervescence with respect to fields ranging from metaphysics to computer programming - provides compelling evidence that the study of logics of analytic implication can be instrumental in identifying connections between topics that would otherwise remain hidden. More concretely, the book identifies and discusses a host of cases in which analytic implication can play an important role in revealing distinct problems to be facets of a larger, cross-disciplinary problem. It introduces an element of constancy and cohesion that has previously been absent in a regrettably fractured field, shoring up those who are sympathetic to the worth of mereological analogy. Moreover, it generates new interest in the field by illustrating a wide range of interesting features present in such logics - and highlighting these features to appeal to researchers in many fields.

Peter Hacker is one of the most notable interpreters of Wittgenstein's work, a powerful and sophisticated exponent of Wittgensteinian ideas, and a distinguished historian of the analytic tradition. Thirteen leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars offer specially written essays in honour of Hacker. Their contributions deal with a variety of themes associated with Wittgenstein. Some deal with issues of Wittgenstein scholarship and interpretation, including areas that have attracted an increasing amount of attention, such as ethics and religion. Others deal with central topics from the history of analytic philosophy. Finally there are essays that explore and assess Wittgensteinian ideas, in some cases as developed by Hacker, in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, or in related areas such as the philosophy of action and the philosophy of neuroscience.

Analytic philosophy - arguably the most important philosophical movement in the 20th century - has gained a new historical self-consciousness, particularly about it's own origins. The period between 1880 and 1930 saw the most important work of its founding figures (Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) take root and flourish. The fifteen previously-unpublished essays in this collection explore different facets of this period, with an emphasis on the vital intellectual relationship between Frege and the early Wittgenstein.

Featuring contributions from leading figures such as Noam Chomsky, Don Ross, Andrew Brook and Patricia Kitcher, this book traces the philosophical roots behind contemporary understandings of cognition, forming both a convincing case for the centrality of philosophy to the history of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, as well as a revealing insight into the way in which ideas have developed, influenced and ultimately moulded our modern view of the mind

This edited volume focuses on the work of Professor Larisa Maksimova, providing a comprehensive account of her outstanding contributions to different branches of non-classical logic. The book covers themes ranging from rigorous implication, relevance and algebraic logic, to interpolation, definability and recognizability in superintuitionistic and modal logics. It features both her scientific autobiography and original contributions from experts in the field of non-classical logics. Professor Larisa Maksimova's influential work involved combining methods of algebraic and relational semantics. Readers will be able to trace both influences on her work, and the ways in which her work has influenced other logicians. In the historical part of this book, it is possible to trace important milestones in Maksimova's career. Early on, she developed an algebraic semantics for relevance logics and relational semantics for the logic of entailment. Later, Maksimova discovered that among the continuum of superintuitionisitc logics there are exactly three pretabular logics. She went on to obtain results on the decidability of tabularity and local tabularity problems for superintuitionistic logics and for extensions of S4. Further investigations by Maksimova were aimed at the study of fundamental properties of logical systems (different versions of interpolation and definability, disjunction property, etc.) in big classes of logics, and on decidability and recognizability of such properties. To this end she determined a powerful combination of algebraic and semantic methods, which essentially determine the modern state of investigations in the area, as can be seen in the later chapters of this book authored by leading experts in non-classical logics. These original contributions bring the reader up to date on the very latest work in this field.

In this important book, Jurgen Habermas takes up certain fundamental questions of philosophy. While much of his recent work has been concerned with issues of morality and law, in this new work Habermas returns to the traditional philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality which were at the centre of his earlier classic book "Knowledge and Human Interests."
In this new work Habermas returns to the traditional philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality.
Habermas pursues these questions from the perspective of his own formal pragmatic theory which is based on an analysis of speech acts and language use.
He asks: How can the idea that our world exists independently of our attempts to describe it be reconciled with the insight that we can never reach reality without the mediation of language?
Addresses the limits of philosophy and reassesses the relation between theory and practice from a 'post-Marxist' perspective.

This book has two objectives: to be a contribution to the understanding of Frege's theory of truth - especially a defence of his notorious critique of the correspondence theory - and to be an introduction to the practice of interpreting philosophical texts.

Willard Van Orman Quine was certainly the greatest analytic philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in 1908, he held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 2000. He made highly important contributions to such areas as mathematical logic, set theory, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of logic. His best known works include "From a Logical Point of View", "Ontological Relativity" and other essays, and his most influential Word and Object. One of Quine's central doctrines is the 'indeterminacy of translation' - the assertion that there is no objective answer to the question of what someone means by any given sentence. This view was first put forward in Word and Object and was shocking enough to draw criticisms from other leading philosophers like Noam Chomsky and Richard Rorty. Eve Gaudet argues that these controversies stem partly from Quine's ambiguities and changes of mind, and partly from his readers' misunderstandings. Gaudet dissipates the confusion by examining afresh. Quine's whole concept of 'a fact of the matter', and evaluating the contributions to the debate by Chomsky, Rorty, Friedman, Gibson and Follesdal in the light of her new interpretation. This is the first book devoted to a defence of Quine's indeterminacy of translation doctrine. Unlike many who conclude in Quine's favour, Gaudet adopts a critical and nuanced approach to Quine's texts, showing that Quine sometimes changed his positions and was not always as clear and consistent as many assume.

The British philosopher, Peter Strawson, has helped shape the development of philosophy for over fifty years. His work has radically altered the philosophical concept of analysis, returned metaphysics to centre stage in Anglo-American philosophy, and has transformed the framework for subsequent interpretations of Kantian philosophy. In this, the first, introduction to Strawson's ideas, Clifford Brown focuses on a selection of Strawson's most important texts and close and detailed examination of the arguments, and contributions to debates (with, for example, Russell, Quine and Austin), which have done the most to establish Strawson's formidable reputation. Each chapter provides clear exposition of a central work and explores the ways in which other philosophers have responded to Strawson's initiatives. Brown shows how Strawson's philosophical approach has been to seek better understanding of particular concepts or concept-groups and to draw out an awareness of parallels and connections among them that sheds new light over an apparently familiar landscape. The central thoughts in logic and language with which Strawson began his career are shown to have remained constant throughout while manifesting their applications across an even broader range of philosophical topics.

Donald Davidson's work has been of seminal importance in the development of analytic philosophy and his views on the nature of language, mind and action remain the starting point for many of the central debates in the analytic tradition. His ideas, however, are complex, often technical, and interconnected in ways that can make them difficult to understand. This introduction to Davidson's philosophy examines the full range of his writings to provide a clear succinct overview of his ideas. This book begins with an account of the assumptions and structure of Davidson's philosophy of language, introducing his compositionalism, extensionalism and commitment to a Tarski-style theory of truth as the model for theories of meaning. It goes on to show how that philosophical framework is to be applied and how it challenges the traditional picture. Marc Joseph examines Davidson's influential work on action theory and events and discusses the commonly made charge that his theory of action and mind leaves the mental as a mere 'epiphenomenon' of the physical. The final section explores Davidson's philosophy of mind, some of its consequences for traditional views of subjectivity and objectivity and, more generally, the relation between minded beings and the physical and mental world they occupy.

This historically-informed critical assessment of Dummett's account of abstract objects, examines in detail some of the Fregean presuppositions of Dummett's account whilst also engaging with phenomenological approaches and recent work on the problem of abstract entities.

Is the world of appearances the real world?

Are there facts that exist independently of our minds?

Are there vague objects?

Russell on Metaphysics brings together for the first time a comprehensive selection of Russell's writing on metaphysics in one volume. Russell's major and lasting contribution to metaphysics has been hugely influential and his insights have led to the establishment of analytic philosophy as a dominant stream in philosophy. Stephen Mumford chronicles the metaphysical nature of these insights through accessible introductions to the texts, setting them in context and understanding their continued importance. Russell on Metaphysics is both a valuable introduction to Bertrand Russell as a metaphysician, and an introduction to analytic philosophy and its history.

Series Information:
Studies in Philosophy

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

The volume combines a historical and philosophical study of Russell's theory of descriptions. It defends, develops and extends the theory as a contribution to natural language semantics while also arguing for a reassessment of the important of linguistic inquiry to Russell's philosophical project.

This collection of previously unpublished essays presents a new approach to the history of analytic philosophy, one which does not assume at the outset a general characterization of the distinguishing elements of the analytic tradition. The distinguished contributors, including luminaries W.V. Quine, John Rawls and Hilary Putnam, pay close attention to the historical contexts in which analytic philosophers have worked, revealing multiple discontinuities and misunderstandings, as well as a complex interaction between science and philosophical reflection.

Finally available in English, Prihonsky's New Anti-Kant is an inescapable book for anyone interested in Kant's Critical philosophy. It provides a concise and systematic recapitulation of Bolzano's insightful, trenchant criticisms of Kant, and provides a fresh window into historical developments in 19th century post-Kantian philosophy

This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the problem of a priori knowledge from a historical as well as a systematic perspective. The author explores Kant's views in connection with the possibility of revision, something hardly, if at all, done in philosophical literature. Furthermore, the views of well-renowned philosophers such as Quine, Putnam, Kitcher, and Hale are discussed in detail and are put into a historical and systematic perspective. Finally, this book contains a glossary of important notions offering illuminating accounts of a priori knowledge and related notions and explains the relationship between a priori knowledge, fallibility and revision. The detailing of concepts such as 'defeasibility', 'infallibility', 'falsifiability' helps anyone reading philosophical literature to pin down the meaning of the terms and its implications in this context. The enriched and dual approach the author takes makes the book a very useful and lucid guide to the problem of a priori knowledge.

"The Things We Do and Why We Do Them" argues against the common assumption that there is a kind of thing called 'action' which all reason-giving explanation of action are geared towards. Sandis explains why all theories concerned with the form which any such explanation must take fail from the outset, and shows how various debates on the nature of so-called motivating reasons only arise because the participants all share a number of mistaken views which follow from the basic assumption under attack. In so doing, he urges philosophers and psychologists alike to stop asking whether the explanation of action is causal, and to focus instead on its multifarious objects. This book will appeal to anyone interested in motivational psychology, the reasons for which we act, and the philosophy of explanation in general.

First published in 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most influential-and one of the most obscure-philosophical works of the twentieth century. Duncan Richter's new translation of and commentary on the Tractatus help the reader understand the text and directs the reader to relevant secondary literature. To avoid imposing any particular interpretation on the text, this translation is as literal as possible while honoring Wittgenstein's wishes about how his words should be rendered in English. For similar reasons, Richter more often quotes than paraphrases the selected secondary sources, which represent a variety of opinions on what Wittgenstein meant. This book also includes an introduction by Richter and a bibliography. Like the Tractatus itself, this is not a textbook but a version of the text designed for those who want to read and understand it for themselves.

In the past thirty years epistemology has been one of the fastest moving disciplines in philosophy. The reason for the rapid advancement is partly due to the fact that various schools and movements inside epistemology have developed different answers to classical epistemological problems, and partly due to the fact that formal methods from logic, probability theory and computability have been utilized to deal with many of the same issues and used for applications outside traditional epistemology. "New Waves in Epistemology" reflects these changes by letting up-and-coming scholars describe the current trends as well as discussing the prospects for future development.