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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > Western philosophy, from c 1900 - > Analytical & linguistic philosophy
The book presents the state of the art of research into the legacy of interwar Polish analytic philosophy and exemplifies different approaches to the history of philosophy. It contains discussions and reconstructions of aspects of Polish philosophy and logic as well as reactions to and developments of this tradition.
Knepper criticizes existing efforts in the philosophy of religion for being out of step with, and therefore useless to, the academic study of religion, then forwards a new program for philosophy of religion that is in step with, and therefore useful to, the academic study of religion.
ThisInstitute's Yearbook for the most part, documents its recent activities and provides a forum for the discussion of exact philosophy, logical and empirical investigations, and analysis of language. This volume holds a collection of papers on various aspects of the work of Rudolf Carnap by an international group of distinguished scholars. "
The commonly held view that Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is fideistic loses plausibility when contrasted with recent scholarship on Wittgenstein's corpus and biography. This book reevaluates the place of Wittgenstein in the philosophy of religion and charts a path forward for the subfield by advancing three themes.
An investigatation of the influence of psychology and early phenomenology on the origins of analytic philosophy. This book is also of value for those interested in judgement, proposition, psychologism, logical realism, the problem of error, Gestalt theories, and tropes.
During the last 25 years, a large number of publications on the history of analytic philosophy have appeared, significantly more than in the preceding period. As most of these works are by analytically trained authors, it is tempting to speak of a 'historical turn' in analytic philosophy. The present volume constitutes both a contribution to this body of work and a reflection on what is, or might be, achieved in it. The twelve new essays, by an international group of contributors, range from case studies on individual philosophers (Russell, Carnap, Quine, and Ryle) through discussions of broader themes in the history of analytic philosophy (in logic and philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and psychology) to related methodological reflections (on the relationship between doing analytic philosophy and studying the history of philosophy, on various forms of philosophical history, and on their respective benefits).
This book examines the encounters between leading 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophers: Frege and Husserl, Carnap and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bataille and Ayer, the Royaumont colloquium, and Derrida with Searle.
This first book-length study of the work and life of L. Susan Stebbing relates the development of her thought to the philosophical, social and political background of her life. It also assesses Stebbing's contribution in the light of developments both in analytic philosophy and in linguistics in the decade since her death.
This systematic and historical treatment of Russell's contributions to analytic philosophy, from his embrace of analysis in 1898 to his landmark theory of descriptions in 1905, draws important connections between his philosophically motivated conception of analysis and the technical apparatus he devised to facilitate analyses in mathematics
In clear and lively prose that avoids jargon, the author carefully and systematically examines the many kinds of subtly nuanced words or word-pairs of everyday discourse such as 'and'-'but', 'before'-'ere', 'Chinese'-'Chink', and 'sweat'-'perspiration', that have proven resistant to truth-conditional explanations of meaning.
Ernst Mach -- A Deeper Look has been written to reveal to English-speaking readers the recent revival of interest in Ernst Mach in Europe and Japan. The book is a storehouse of new information on Mach as a philosopher, historian, scientist and person, containing a number of biographical and philosophical manuscripts publihsed for the first time, along with correspondence and other matters published for the first time in English. The book also provides English translations of Mach's controversies with leading physicists and psychologists, such as Max Planck and Carl Stumpf, and offers basic evidence for resolving Mach's position on atomism and Einstein's theory of relativity. Mach's scientific, philosophical and personal influence in a number of countries -- Austria, Germany, Bohemia and Yugoslavia among them -- has been carefully explored and many aspects detailed for the first time. All of the articles are eminently readable, especially those written by Mach's sister. They are deeply researched, new interpretations abound, and the bibliography includes recent works by and about Mach from over a dozen countries. The book also contains many articles by or about Mach's contemporaries, including Ostwald, Dingler, Weichert and, especially, Einstein. Finally, and most intriguingly, the original ideas of Japanese scholars are presented, built on Mach's philosophy. These demonstrate how Mach's world view is currently contributing to the solution of contemporary philosophical problems.
This new, second edition of the popular college textbook offers the beginning philosophy student a comprehensive introduction to several aspects of one of the most influential schools of thought in the twentieth century. Professor Klemke begins by pointing out the distinctions among the various types of analytic and linguistic philosophies, while emphasising that they all arose as a response to the formerly predominant school of absolute idealism. After a prologue section containing a representative exposition of idealism by Josiah Royce, the following sections show the radically new philosophical approach of the analytic school in its various guises: realism and common sense (G. E. Moore); logical atomism (Bertrand Russell); logical positivism (A. J. Ayer); conceptual analysis (Gilbert Ryle, G. E. Moore, John Wisdom); logico-metaphysical analysis (Gustav Bergman, W. V. Quine); linguistic analysis (J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson, J. R. Searle); and the recent development of new realism (Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, Richard N. Boyd).
A COMPANION TO WITTGENSTEIN The most comprehensive survey of Wittgenstein's thought yet compiled, this volume of fifty newly commissioned essays by leading interpreters of his philosophy is a keynote addition to the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series. Full of penetrating insights into the life and work of the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, the collection explores the full range of Wittgenstein's contribution to philosophy. It includes essays on his intellectual development, his work in logic and mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, and much else. As well as examining Wittgenstein's contribution to human understanding in detail, the Companion features vital contextual analysis that traces the relationship between his ideas and those of other philosophers and schools of thought, including the Aristotelian and continental philosophical traditions. Authors also address prominent themes that remain current in today's philosophical debates, explaining Wittgenstein's continuing legacy alongside his historical significance. Essential reading for scholars of philosophy at all levels, A Companion to Wittgenstein combines engaging commentary with unrivaled academic authority.
Material objects persist through time and survive change. How do they manage to do so? What are the underlying facts of persistence? Do objects persist by being "wholly present" at all moments of time at which they exist? Or do they persist by having distinct "temporal segments" confined to the corresponding times? Are objects three-dimensional entities extended in space, but not in time? Or are they four-dimensional spacetime "worms"? These are matters of intense debate, which is now driven by concerns about two major issues in fundamental ontology: parthood and location. It is in this context that broadly empirical considerations are increasingly brought to bear on the debate about persistence. Persistence and Spacetime pursues this empirically based approach to the questions. Yuri Balashov begins by setting out major rival views of persistence - endurance, perdurance, and exdurance - in a spacetime framework and proceeds to investigate the implications of Einstein's theory of relativity for the debate about persistence. His overall conclusion - that relativistic considerations favour four-dimensionalism over three-dimensionalism - is hardly surprising. It is, however, anything but trivial. Contrary to a common misconception, there is no straightforward argument from relativity to four-dimensionalism. The issues involved are complex, and the debate is closely entangled with a number of other philosophical disputes, including those about the nature and ontology of time, parts and wholes, material constitution, causation and properties, and vagueness.
Logic as Universal Science offers a detailed reconstruction of the underlying philosophy in The Principles of Mathematics showing how Russell sought to deliver a death blow to the dominant Kantian view that formal logic is a concise and dry science and unable to enlarge our understanding.
The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust. The book's principal aim is to move beyond the familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of alternative theories of meaning and understanding from the Anglophone analytic tradition. The book takes as its starting point the claim that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two specific yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks). I locate this problematic within the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic heteronomy, and claim that Theodor W. Adorno's "dialectic of aesthetic semblance" describes the normative demand that a successful artwork maintain a dynamic tension between these dual desiderata. While working within a framework inspired by Adorno, the book further claims that certain concepts and lines of reasoning from contemporary philosophy best explicate how individual artworks fulfill these dual desiderata, including the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre's theory of the imaginary, work in the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin's theory of dialectical images. Individual chapters provide close readings of lyric poetry by Paul Celan (including a critique of Derridean deconstruction), Holocaust memorials in Berlin, texts by the Austrian quotational artist Heimrad Backer, Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah and Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus. The result is a set of interpretations of Holocaust artworks that, in their precision, specificity and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art.
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 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.
The book consists of a series of chapters on Carnap's ideal of explication as an alternative to the naturalistic conceptions of science, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy.
Paul Horwich develops an interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later writings that differs in substantial respects from what can already be found in the literature. He argues that it is Wittgenstein's radically anti-theoretical metaphilosophy-and not (as assumed by most other commentators) his identification of the meaning of a word with its use-that lies at the foundation of his discussions of specific issues concerning language, the mind, mathematics, knowledge, art, and religion. Thus Horwich's first aim is to give a clear account of Wittgenstein's hyper-deflationist view of what philosophy is, how it should be conducted, and what it might achieve. His second aim is to defend this view against a variety of objections: that is, to display its virtues, not merely as an accurate reading of Wittgenstein, but as the correct conception of philosophy itself. And the third aim is to examine the application of this view to a variety of topics-but primarily to language and to experience. A further distinctive feature of this approach is its presupposition that Wittgenstein's ideas may be formulated with precision and that solid arguments may be found on their behalf. This pair of guiding assumptions-the centrality of Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy, and its susceptibility to rigorous articulation and rational support-are admittedly controversial but are vindicated, not just textually, but by the power and plausibility of the philosophy that results from them.
Willard Van Orman Quine's work revolutionized the fields of epistemology, semantics and ontology. At the heart of his philosophy are several interconnected doctrines: his rejection of conventionalism and of the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth, his rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation and his thesis of the inscrutability of reference. In this book Edward Becker sets out to interpret and explain these doctrines. He offers detailed analyses of the relevant texts, discusses Quine's views on meaning, reference and knowledge, and shows how Quine's views developed over the years. He also proposes a new version of the linguistic doctrine of logical truth, and a new way of rehabilitating analyticity. His rich exploration of Quine's thought will interest all those seeking to understand and evaluate the work of one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century.
I wish to express, first of all, my profound gratitude to Professor J. M. Bochenski, without whose assistance the present work would have not been possible. To be concise, I would like to state that his contribution to this book may be viewed at three levels: (1) that of the general spirit, (2) that of the specific ideas, theses or approaches which are expressed in its pages, (3) that of this work qua doctoral dissertation. The general spirit which has guided my research coincides with that underlying Professor: Oochenski's own works, in particular his Formale Logik (Munchen 1956). Moreover, the particular occasion which suggested my investigation was a statement included in that book according to which the literature in the field still lacked a detailed work on Frege (p. 317). I wish, likewise, to express my gratitude to other professors of the University of Fribourg for their generous help. I mention especially Professors P. Wyser, M. D. Philippe, N. Luyten, and V. Kuiper. I have also benefited from Professor E. Specker's lectures at the Eidge nossische Technische Hochschule (ZUrich) and from Professor Olof Gigon's lectures at the University of Bern. From an earlier period I wish to express my gratitude to the professors of the philosophy department of the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, especially the late Professor Francisco Romero. The Swiss National Library (Bern) has greatly facilitated access to bibliographical sources, and the library of the University of Munster (Westphalien) has kindly provided microfilms of Frege's Nachlap."
Analytic philosophy has been a dominant intellectual movement in the 20th century and a reflection of the cultural pre-eminence of scientism. In response to analytic philosophy's peculiar reticence (and inability) to discuss itself, this book provides its first comprehensive history and critique. The central element in the analytic conversation has been the Enlightenment Project: the appeal to an autonomous human reason, freed of any higher authority and channeling itself through science as its privileged tool. This centrality is demonstrated by systematically examining its presence and development in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology, language, psychology, social science, ethics, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy. This journey highlights the internal logical disintegration of that project. Post-modern relativism is its natural offspring and not a viable alternative. The Enlightenment Project's conception of physical science is defective; this defective conception of physical science renders the analytic conception of social science, philosophical psychology, and epistemology defective; and that defective conception of the human condition leads to defective conceptions of both moral and political philosophy, specifically the idea of social engineering or social technology. Throughout the book, an alternative conception of philosophy is presented as a way out of the abyss of analysis, an alternative that reconnects philosophy with the mainstream of Western civilization and initiates the process of providing a coherent cultural narrative. This book will be of particular interest to any sophisticated reader concerned about the lack of a coherent cultural narrative.
Volume III of a tetralogy devoted to Divine Agency and Divine Action articulates a comprehensive vision of systematic theology focused on divine action from creation to eschatology. Volume I developed the foundational conceptual work by showing that the concept of action is a radically open concept that readily makes possible the appropriation of divine action for today. Volume II explained that in exploring divine action one needs to specify the actual divine actions under review and thus showed that there could be no progress with extensive soundings across the tradition from Paul to Molina. Work on divine action requires extended work in doctrinal criticism rooted in the history of theology as a prelude to normative work that communicates a normative vision of divine action for today. This vision is best explored by taking up the great themes of systematic theology from creation to eschatology yet treating them in a deflationary manner that sees systematic theology as university-level, postbaptismal, Christian instruction. Leading scholar William J. Abraham recognises that we live in a golden period of theological studies-the range and depth of material is extraordinary-yet we also live in a period of disorientation and confusion that calls for a fresh engagement with the demands of systematic theology. Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume III meets that demand by insisting that systematic theology has its own content and modes of inquiry; that it belongs intimately to the journey of faith; and that it requires authentic academic clarity and rigor. It reclaims the rightful place of systematic theology as the center of gravity for theological studies but does so in a manner that makes it available to both the church and to the academy.
Possibility offers a new analysis of the metaphysical concepts of possibility and necessity, one that does not rely on any sort of 'possible worlds'. The analysis proceeds from an account of the notion of a physical object and from the positing of properties and relations. It is motivated by considerations about how we actually speak of and think of objects. Michael Jubien discusses several closely related topics, including different purported varieties of possible worlds, the doctrine of 'essentialism', natural kind terms, and alleged examples of necessity a posteriori. The book also offers a new theory of the functioning of proper names, both actual and fictional, and the discussion of natural kind terms and necessity a posteriori depends in part on this theory. |
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