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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > Western philosophy, from c 1900 - > Analytical & linguistic philosophy
This book offers a defense against non-classical approaches to the paradoxes. The author argues that, despite appearances, the paradoxes give no reason at all to reject classical logic. In fact, he believes classical solutions fare better than non-classical ones with respect to key tests like Curry's Paradox, a Liar-like paradox that dialetheists are forced to solve in a way totally disjoint from their solution to the Liar. Graham Priest's In Contradiction was the first major work that advocated the use of non-classical approaches. Since then, these views have moved into the philosophical mainstream. Much of this movement is fueled by a widespread sense that these logically heterodox solutions get to the real nub of the issue. They lack the ad hoc feel of many other solutions to the paradoxes. The author believes that it's long past time for a response to these attacks against classical orthodoxy. He presents a non-logically-revisionary solution to the paradoxes. This title offers a literal way of cashing out the disquotation metaphor. While the details of the view are novel, the idea has a pre-history in the relevant literature. The author examines objections in detail. He rejects each in turn and concludes by comparing the virtues of his logically orthodox approach with those of the paraconsistent and paracomplete competition.
Bertrand Russell was a central figure in the rise of analytic
philosophy, and there are few works in the genre whose influence is
comparable to The Principles of Mathematics (1903), a book that
established him as a major force in British philosophy. Logic as
Universal Science takes a fresh look at the context of The
Principles. This, it is argued, involves an extended argument
against Kant's transcendental idealism and his conception of
mathematics as a synthetic a priori science grounded in pure
intuition. Philosophically, Russell's logicism substitutes pure
logic for pure intuitions as the true source of mathematical
knowledge. In this way, logic turns out to be a universal science
and very far from Kant's general logic, which is a concise and dry
science, delivering nothing but a purely formal criterion for
knowledge. The picture of logic emerging from this opposition is
investigated in detail for its content and consequences.
This book explores how Wittgenstein's personal life provided more of a reference point for his philosophical work than has been previously thought. Focusing on two key phases in Wittgenstein's life during which he dramatically changed his philosophical orientation and reinvented both his intellectual methods and himself, the author presents and alternative understanding of Wittgenstein and his work. The book firstly addresses the period of his "anthropological turn" (1929-1932), in which Wittgenstein developed one of his central arguments concerning the role of the body in the acquisition of language and the rules of social practice. The second key phase, commencing after the end of the Second World War, was one of introspection, during which Wittgenstein became intensely preoccupied by inner events, sensations, and his own personality. As his work evolved, the anthropological aspects became the primary focus of his work by the end of his life. Providing an accessible and novel insight into Wittgenstein's work and his interest in 'continental' philosophy, this translation will appeal to a wide audience.
This abridged and revised edition of the original book (Springer-Wien-New York: 2001) offers the only comprehensive history and documentation of the Vienna Circle based on new sources with an innovative historiographical approach to the study of science. With reference to previously unpublished archival material and more recent literature, it refutes a number of widespread cliches about "neo-positivism" or "logical positivism". Following some insights on the relation between the history of science and the philosophy of science, the book offers an accessible introduction to the complex subject of "the rise of scientific philosophy" in its socio-cultural background and European philosophical networks till the forced migration in the Anglo-Saxon world. The first part of the book focuses on the origins of Logical Empiricism before World War I and the development of the Vienna Circle in "Red Vienna" (with the "Verein Ernst Mach"), its fate during Austro-Fascism (Schlick's murder 1936) and its final expulsion by National-Socialism beginning with the "Anschluss" in 1938. It analyses the dynamics of the Schlick-Circle in the intellectual context of "late enlightenment" including the minutes of the meetings from 1930 on for the first time published and presents an extensive description of the meetings and international Unity of Science conferences between 1929 and 1941. The chapters introduce the leading philosophers of the Schlick Circle (e.g., Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Felix Kaufmann, Edgar Zilsel) and describe the conflicting interaction between Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the long term communication between Moritz Schlick, Friedrich Waismann and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as between the Vienna Circle with Heinrich Gomperz and Karl Popper. In addition, Karl Menger's "Mathematical Colloquium" with Kurt Goedel is presented as a parallel movement. The final chapter of this section describes the demise of the Vienna Circle and the forced exodus of scientists and intellectuals from Austria. The second part of the book includes a bio-bibliographical documentation of the Vienna Circle members and for the first time of the assassination of Moritz Schlick in 1936, followed by an appendix comprising an extensive list of sources and literature.
Philosophical logic has been, and continues to be, a driving force behind much progress and development in philosophy more broadly. This collection by up-and-coming philosophical logicians deals with a broad range of topics, including, for example, proof-theory, probability, context-sensitivity, dialetheism and dynamic semantics.
The book offers a reflection on the nature, scope, and limits of knowledge that have been at the focus of the author's work over decades. The essays collected in this volume expound and extend these efforts in exploring the outer fringes of understanding: the outer boundaries of conceivability, the limits of cognition, and the ramifications of ineffability and paradox. They join in exploring the lay of the land at the boundaries of knowledge. The first chapters address basic facts regarding the conceptualization of knowledge. This is followed by a study on how to deal with problems relating to the affirmation and considerations of truth. The final chapters scrutinize the limits of demonstration and the inherent impossibility of realizing an ideal systematization of our knowledge of totalities. The book affords novel perspectives regarding the thought of a widely appreciated philosopher. It is an original work aimed for readers interested in the theory of knowledge and philosophy of cognition.
This book brings together the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Lacan around their treatments of 'astonishment,' an experience of being struck by something that appears to be extraordinarily significant. Both thinkers have a central interest in the dissatisfaction with meaning that these experiences generate when we attempt to articulate them, to bring language to bear on them. Maria Balaska argues that this frustration and difficulty with meaning reveals a more fundamental characteristic of our sense-making capacities -namely, their groundlessness. Instead of disappointment with language's sense-making capacities, Balaska argues that Wittgenstein and Lacan can help us find in this revelation of meaning's groundlessness an opportunity to acknowledge our own involvement in meaning, to creatively participate in it and thereby to enrich our forms of life with language.
This book gives a unique historical and interpretive analysis of a
widely pervasive mode of thought that it describes as the legacy of
positivism. Viewing Auguste Comte as a pivotal figure, it charts
the historical origins of his positivism and follows its later
development through John Stuart Mill and Emile Littre. It shows how
epistemological shifts in positivism influenced parallel
developments in the human and legal sciences, and thereby treats
legal positivism and positivism as it is understood in the human
sciences within a common framework.
At certain moments in his political essays, Kant conceives of socio-historical emancipation as a process of working ourselves out of pathological legacies, suggesting that emancipation would involve a process of working through our affective attachments to entrenched, regressive social arrangements. Jackson shows how Freud s analyses of melancholia, mania and the work of mourning can contribute to an understanding of key dimensions of such pathological social fixations, as well as the possibility of working through the past. This book argues that bringing Freud s provocative analyses of loss to bear on particular philosophical treatments of history leads to a more coherent, psychoanalytically informed understanding of history. Although Freud does not himself integrate these themes into a theory of socio-political emancipation, his thinking nonetheless can be read as contributing to such a theory. To develop this idea the book draws on thinkers such as Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Axel Honneth, and Judith Butler. The book engages students and scholars of contemporary continental philosophy by arguing for connections between psychoanalysis, philosophy, and critical theory.
This 1997 collection of essays addresses topics that are of crucial importance to the lives of us all. Is there a mode of thinking peculiar to human life and its concerns, which is different from and irreducible to scientific rationality? Is historical understanding different from scientific understanding? Do psychology, religion and aesthetics have their own forms of rationality? Can you be rational about human life without being scientific? The contributors address these and related questions, some focusing on the history of the development of the notion of Verstehen, others examining particular areas of discourse and practice.
This book investigates the phenomenological ways that dance choreographing and dance performance exemplify both Truth and meaning-making within Native American epistemology, from an analytic philosophical perspective. Given that within Native American communities dance is regarded both as an integral cultural conduit and "a doorway to a powerful wisdom," Shay Welch argues that dance and dancing can both create and communicate knowledge. She explains that dance-as a form of oral, narrative storytelling-has the power to communicate knowledge of beliefs and histories, and that dance is a form of embodied narrative storytelling. Welch provides analytic clarity on how this happens, what conditions are required for it to succeed, and how dance can satisfy the relational and ethical facets of Native epistemology.
This book presents both a historical overview of the absorption of Heidegger's thought into English-language philosophical schools as well as a philosophical discussion of his thought provided by contemporary scholars. The text describes the ways in which a philosophical methodology and worldview seemingly so inhospitable to Anglophone academia has managed to find an unlikely home. This volume is roughly divided into two types of contributions: discussions of Heidegger's reception in the English-speaking world, and outstanding examples of English-language Heidegger scholarship. The first type includes both historiographical accounts of the encounters between Heidegger's thought and the Anglo-American world, as well as their philosophical expositions and critiques. The second group of chapters reveal the latest contemporary scholarship by contemporary Heideggerians writing in English. It is moreover the first volume to bring together thinkers from both genealogies of Anglo-American Heideggerianism appealing to students and researchers working in both of these camps.
Supervenience is one of the 'hot discoveries' of analytic philosophy, and this collection of essays on the topic represents an examination of it and its application to major areas of philosophy. The interest in supervenience has much to do with the flexibility of the concept. To say that x supervenes on y indicates a degree of dependence without committing one to the view that x can be reduced to y. Thus supervenience is a relationship that has the potential of replacing the traditional notion of dependence, while performing at least part of the function reductive relationships were supposed to fulfil. Moreover, since it is a topic-neutral concept, supervenience has a wide range of applicability.
This book is a collection of articles authored by renowed Polish ontologists living and working in the early part of the 21st century. Harking back to the well-known Polish Lvov-Warsaw School, founded by Kazimierz Twardowski, we try to make our ontological considerations as systematically rigorous and clear as possible - i.e. to the greatest extent feasible, but also no more than the subject under consideration itself allows for. Hence, the papers presented here do not seek to steer clear of methods of inquiry typical of either the formal or the natural sciences: on the contrary, they use such methods wherever possible. At the same time, despite their adherence to rigorous methods, the Polish ontologists included here do not avoid traditional ontological issues, being inspired as they most certainly are by the great masters of Western philosophy - from Plato and Aristotle, through St. Thomas and Leibniz, to Husserl, to name arguably just the most important.
This book explores Hegel's theory of modality (actuality, possibility, necessity, contingency) through extremely close textual analysis of the "Actuality" chapter of Hegel's Science of Logic. The "Actuality" chapter is the equivalence of Aristotle's momentous Metaphysics book 9. Because of this, Hegel's chapter deserves the same thorough investigation into its complex insights and argumentation. This book situates Hegel's insights about possibility and necessity within historical and contemporary debates about metaphysics, while analyzing some of the most controversial themes of Hegel's theory, such as the question of the ontological status of unactualized possibilities, the relationship between contradiction and possibility, and the claim that necessity leads to freedom. This book also contributes to an ongoing philosophical inquiry into the nature of dialectics by articulating Hegel's "Actuality" chapter as a coherent argument divided into twenty-seven premises.
To what extent can we doubt certainties? How are certainties expressed in words? Which language games convey certainty? To answer these questions we have to recall the method Wittgenstein used in his investigations. When we look at language games and forms of life as inseparable phenomena, do forms of life then provide any certainty? On the other hand, do we automatically relapse into relativism once we doubt certainties? Which formal structures underlie certainty and doubt? The book is intended to answer these questions.
The growing interest in fragmentalism is one of the most exciting trends in philosophy of time and is gradually reshaping the contemporary debate. Providing an extensive interpretation of this view, Samuele Iaquinto and Giuliano Torrengo articulate a novel theory of the passage of time and argue that it is the most effective in vindicating the inherent dynamism of reality. Iaquinto and Torrengo offer the first full-range application of fragmentalism to a number of metaphysical topics, including the open future, causation, the A-theoretic interpretation of special relativity and time travel. The resulting picture, they argue, conveys the potential of a radically new understanding of time.
Hilary Whitehall Putnam was one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. As student of Rudolph Carnap's and Hans Reichenbach's, he went on to become not only a major figure in North American analytic philosophy, who made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics, and physics but also to the disciplines of logic, number theory, and computer science. He passed away on March 13, 2016. The present volume is a memorial to his extraordinary intellectual contributions, honoring his contributions as a philosopher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. It features essays by an international team of leading philosophers, covering all aspects of Hilary Putnam's philosophy from his work in ethics and the history of philosophy to his contributions to the philosophy of science, logic, and mathematics. Each essay is an original contribution. "Hilary Putnam is one of the most distinguished philosophers of the modern era, and just speaking personally, one of the smartest and most impressive thinkers I have ever been privileged to know-as a good friend for 70 years. The fine essays collected here are a fitting tribute to a most remarkable figure." Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "In Engaging Putnam excellent philosophers engage the writings and ideas of Hilary Putnam, one of the most productive and influential philosophers of the last century. Putnam stands out because of the combination of brilliance and a firm grasp of reality he brought to a very broad range of issues: the logic and the philosophy of mathematics, free-will, skepticism, realism, internalism and externalism and a lot more. Along with this he offered penetrating insights about other great philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein. All great philosophers make us think. With many, we try to figure out the strange things they say. With Putnam, we are made to think about clearly explained examples and arguments that get to the heart of the issues he confronts. This book is a wonderful contribution to the continuation of Putnam-inspired thinking." John Perry, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University
The scope and method of logic as we know it today eminently reflect the ground-breaking developments of set theory and the logical foundations of mathematics at the turn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, little effort has been made to understand the idiosyncrasies of the philosophical context that led to these tremendous innovations in the 19thcentury beyond what is found in the works of mathematicians such as Frege, Hilbert, and Russell. This constitutes a monumental gap in our understanding of the central influences that shaped 19th-century thought, from Kant to Russell, and that helped to create the conditions in which analytic philosophy could emerge. The aim of Logic from Kant to Russell is to document the development of logic in the works of 19th-century philosophers. It contains thirteen original essays written by authors from a broad range of backgrounds-intellectual historians, historians of idealism, philosophers of science, and historians of logic and analytic philosophy. These essays question the standard narratives of analytic philosophy's past and address concerns that are relevant to the contemporary philosophical study of language, mind, and cognition. The book covers a broad range of influential thinkers in 19th-century philosophy and analytic philosophy, including Kant, Bolzano, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze, the British Algebraists and Idealists, Moore, Russell, the Neo-Kantians, and Frege.
Today's leading theories of meaning, chiefly those of Michael Dummett and Donald Davidson, depend crucially upon Gottlob Frege's distinctions between sense and reference, sense and utterance-force, and sense and tone. But while the notions of reference, sense, and force have dominated the discussion, the subtle workings of tone have received scant attention. Long overdue, this is the first comprehensive study of tone. Careful analysis of the more than two dozen varieties identified by Frege and Dummett reveals serious weaknesses in their explanatory framework. The author sketches a broader conception in terms of speakers correctly making things out to be a certain way, a formulation that avoids the demonstrated shortcomings of Fregean truth-conditional accounts while capturing the representational character of meaning as this applies right across the language-not only to words and sentences, but to discreet linguistic components such as word-order, mood of the verb, and patterns of intonation and stress.
The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the birth of two distinct philosophical schools in Europe: analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The history of 20th-century philosophy is often written as an account of the development of one or both of these schools, as well as their overt or covert mutual hostility. What is often left out of this history, however, is the relationship between the two European schools and a third significant philosophical event: the birth and development of pragmatism, the indigenous philosophical movement of the United States. Through a careful analysis of seminal figures and central texts, this book explores the mutual intellectual influences, convergences, and differences between these three revolutionary philosophical traditions. The essays in this volume aim to show the central role that pragmatism played in the development of philosophical thought at the turn of the twentieth century, widen our understanding of a seminal point in the history of philosophy, and shed light on the ways in which these three schools of thought continue to shape the theoretical agenda of contemporary philosophy.
This book is an edited collection of essays in celebration of the centenary of Samuel Alexander's Space, Time and Deity, published in 1920. Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) was a leading figure of British philosophy in the early twentieth century. He was partly responsible for the 'new realism' movement along with G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. However, his work has been overlooked in developments of twentieth century philosophy and yet his theories and style of theorising are in vogue. This book begins with three previously unpublished papers by Alexander that shed light on his metaphysical commitments about time, universals, God, knowledge of past truths, grounding, and inference in logic and science. There are also two important posthumous chapters by philosophers of the mid-twentieth century, who elaborate on his life and most significant contributions. The second half of the book contains new essays by current scholars, discussing Alexander on metaphysical realism, idealism, naturalism, space and time, process ontology, ontological categories, epistemology, perception, philosophy of history, emergentism, and empiricism.
Rudolf Carnap's entire theory of Language structure "came to me," he reports, "like a vision during a sleepless night in January 1931, when I was ill." This theory appeared in The Logical Syntax of Language (1934). Carnap argued that many philosophical controversies really depend upon whether a particular language form should be used. This leads him to his famous "Principle of tolerance" by which everyone is free to mix and match the rules of his language and therefore his logic in any way he wishes. In this way, philosophical issues become reduced to a discussion of syntactical properties, plus reasons of practical convenience for preferring one form of language to another. In a tour de force of precise reasoning, Carnap also indicated how two model languages could be constructed. This is one of three books which Open Court is making available in paperback reprint in its Open Court Classics series. The other two are Carnap's The Logical Structure of the World and Schlick's General Theory of Knowledge.
In The Logical Structure of the World (1928), Rudolf Carnap analyzes the fundamental elements of experience, the derivation of qualities, the construction of sensory classes, and the construction of the special and temporal orders. In the short essay, Pseudoproblems in Philosophy (1928), Carnap advances the view, which was to become influential in the 1930s, that in many philosophical disputes, both sides of the argument can be discarded as strictly meaningless. This is one of three books that Open Court is making available in paperback reprint in its Open Court Classics series. The other two are Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language and Schlick's Theory of Knowledge. |
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