Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers - but until now her books have never been published in English. "Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy" rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy. Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy - a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides - and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.

Each "Briefly" volume provides a very short chapter setting the scene by explaining who this writer is and why this book in particular was so important, or why it became so important to Western thought. This short contextualising chapter is then followed by an in-depth summary of the book in question. This includes line by line analysis and short quotes to give students a feel for the original text. Essentially a "Briefly" will allow students to become familiar with a key philosophical work in a very short time, but without missing out on the relevant parts of the original work. A glossary of terms follows the summary to help students with definitions of philosophical terms.

Bertrand Russell famously distinguished between 'knowledge by acquaintance' and 'knowledge by description'. For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, many philosophers viewed the notion of acquaintance with suspicion, associating it with Russellian ideas that they would wish to reject. However in the past decade or two the concept has undergone a striking revival in mainstream 'analytic' philosophy-acquaintance is, it seems, respectable again. This volume showcases the great variety of topics in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language for which philosophers are currently employing the notion of acquaintance. It is the first collection of new essays devoted to the topic of acquaintance, featuring chapters from many of the world's leading experts in this area. Opening with an extensive introductory essay, which provides some historical background and summarizes the main debates and issues concerning acquaintance, the remaining thirteen contributions are grouped thematically into four sections: phenomenal consciousness, perceptual experience, reference, and epistemology.

This volume is of interest for anyone who aims at understanding the so-called 'later' or 'mature' Wittgenstein. Its contributions, written by leading German-speaking Wittgenstein-scholars like Hans Sluga, Hans-Johann Glock, Joachim Schulte, Eike von Savigny, and others, provide deeper insights to seemingly well discussed topics, such as family resemblance, Ubersicht (perspicuous representation), religion, or grammar, or they explain in an eye-opening fashion hitherto enigmatic expressions of Wittgenstein, such as 'The pneumatic conception of thought' (PI 109), 'A mathematical proof must be surveyable' (RFM III 1), or 'On this a curious remark by H. Newman' (OC 1).

In 1933 Ludwig Wittgenstein revised a manuscript he had compiled from his 1930-1932 notebooks, but the work as a whole was not published until 1969, as "Philosophische Grammatik. "This first English translation clearly reveals the central place "Philosophical Grammar "occupies in Wittgenstein's thought and provides a link from his earlier philosophy to his later views.

Many people go through life in a rather hit-or-miss fashion, casting about for ideas to explain why their projects improve or decline, why they are successful or why they are not. Guessing and "hunches," however, are not very reliable. And without the knowledge of how to actually investigate situations, good or bad, and get the true facts, a person is set adrift in a sea of unevaluated data. Accurate investigation is, in fact, a rare commodity. Man's tendency in matters he doesn't understand is to accept the first proffered explanation, no matter how faulty. Thus investigatory technology had not actually been practiced or refined. However, L. Ron Hubbard made a breakthrough in the subject of logic and reasoning which led to his development of the first truly effective way to search for and consistently find the actual causes for things. Knowing how to investigate gives one the power to navigate through the random facts and opinions and emerge with the real reasons behind success or failure in any aspect of life. By really finding out why things are the way they are, one is therefore able to remedy and improve a situation-any situation. This is an invaluable technology for people in all walks of life.

What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world's foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion. Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy.

How should pragmatists respond to and contribute to the resolution of one of America s greatest and most enduring problems? Given that the most important thinkers of the pragmatist movement Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead said little about the problem of race, how does their distinctly American way of thinking confront the hardship and brutality that characterizes the experience of many African Americans in this country? In 12 thoughtful and provocative essays, contemporary American pragmatists connect ideas with action and theory with practice to come to terms with this seemingly intractable problem. Exploring themes such as racism and social change, the value of the concept of race, the role of education in ameliorating racism, and the place of democracy in dealing with the tragedy of race, the voices gathered in this volume consider how pragmatism can focus new attention on the problem of race.

Contributors are Michael Eldridge, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Judith M. Green, D. Micah Hester, Donald F. Koch, Bill E. Lawson, David E. McClean, Gregory F. Pappas, Scott L. Pratt, Alfred E. Prettyman, John R. Shook, Paul C. Taylor, and Cornel West."

W. V. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", first published in 1951, is one of the most influential articles in the history of analytic philosophy. It does not just question central semantic and epistemological views of logical positivism and early analytic philosophy, it also marks a momentous challenge to the ideas that conceptual analysis is a main task of philosophy and that philosophy is an a priori discipline which differs in principle from the empirical sciences. These ideas dominated early analytic philosophy, but similar views are to be found in the Kantian tradition, in phenomenology and in philosophical hermeneutics. In questioning this consensus from the perspective of a radical empiricism, Quine's article has had a sustained and lasting impact across all these philosophical divisions. Quine himself moved from the abandonment of the analytic/synthetic distinction to a thoroughgoing naturalism, and many analytic philosophers have followed his lead. The current collection differs from other anthologies devoted to Quine in two respects. On the one hand, it focuses on his attack on analyticity, apriority and necessity; on the other, it considers implications of that attack that far transcend the limits of Quine scholarship, and lie at the heart of the current self-understanding of philosophy. The contributors include both opponents and proponents of the dichotomies attacked by Quine. Furthermore, they include both eminent figures such as Boghossian, Burge, and Davidson, and up and coming younger philosophers.

Is it possible to apply a theoretical approach to ethics? The French philosopher Catherine Chalier addresses this question with an unusual combination of traditional ethics and continental philosophy. In a powerful argument for the necessity of moral reflection, Chalier counters the notion that morality can be derived from theoretical knowledge.

Chalier analyzes the positions of two great moral philosophers, Kant and Levinas. While both are critical of an ethics founded on knowledge, their criticisms spring from distinctly different points of view. Chalier reexamines their conclusions, pitting Levinas against (and with) Kant, to interrogate the very foundations of moral philosophy and moral imperatives. She provides a clear, systematic comparison of their positions on essential ideas such as free will, happiness, freedom, and evil. Although based on a close and elegant presentation of Kant and Levinas, Chalier's book serves as a context for the development of the author's own reflections on the question "What am I supposed to do?" and its continued importance for contemporary philosophy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original thinker, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking far outside the bounds of philosophy alone. In this engaging Introduction, A.C. Grayling makes Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general reader by explaining the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought.

While Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and George Santayana (1863-1952) may never have met or even have studied one another's work, they experienced similar cultural conditions and their thinking took similar shapes. Yet, until now, their respective bodies of work have been examined separately and in isolation from one another.
Santayana is often regarded as an aesthetician and metaphysician, but Wittgenstein's work is usually seen as antithetical to the philosophical approaches favored by Santayana. In this insightful new study, Michael Hodges and John Lachs argue that behind the striking differences in philosophical style and vocabulary there is a surprising agreement in position. The similarities have largely gone unnoticed because of their divergent styles, different metaphilosophies, and separate spheres of influence. Hodges and Lachs show that Santayana's and Wittgenstein's works express their philosophical responses to contingency. Surprisingly, both thinkers turn to the integrity of human practices to establish a viable philosophical understanding of the human condition.
Both of these important twentieth-century philosophers formed their mature views at a time when the comfortable certainties of Western civilization were crumbling all around them. What they say is similar at least in part because they wished to resist the spread of ruin by relying on the calm sanity of our linguistic and other practices. According to both, it is not living human knowledge but a mistaken philosophical tradition that demands foundations and thus creates intellectual homelessness and displacement. Both thought that, to get our house in order, we have to rethink our social, religious, philosophical, and moral practices outside the context of the search for certainty. This insight and the projects that flowed from it define their philosophical kinship.
Thinking in the Ruins will enhance our understanding of these monumental thinkers' intellectual accomplishments and show how each influenced subsequent American philosophers. The book also serves as a call to philosophers to look beyond traditional classifications to the substance of philosophical thought.

We live in an age of impotence. Stuck between global war and global finance, between identity and capital, we seem to be incapable of producing that radical change that is so desperately needed. Is there still a way to disentangle ourselves from a global order that shapes our politics as well as our imagination? In his most systematic book to date, renowned Italian theorist Franco Berardi Bifo tackles this question through a solid yet visionary analysis of the three fundamental concepts of Possibility, Potency, and Power. Overcoming any temptation of giving in to despair or nostalgia, Berardi proposes the notion of Futurability as a way to remind us that even within the darkness of our current crisis, still lies dormant the horizon of possibility.

Explores the Pragmatists' contributions to American social thought. The describes the Pragmatic analysis of society's potential for ongoing intelligent inquiry and cooperative evaluation to address social ills. He considers the nature of political language, and the relative importance of the moral and political values of liberty and equality.

Psychosemantics explores the relation between commonsense psychological theories and problems that are central to semantics and the philosophy of language. Building on and extending Fodor's earlier work it puts folk psychology on firm theoretical ground and rebuts externalist, holist, and naturalist threats to its position.

"This book is included in the series Explorations in Cognitive Science, edited by Margaret A. Boden.

A Bradford Book."

Logical Atomism is a philosophy that sought to account for the world in all its various aspects by relating it to the structure of the language in which we articulate information. In The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Bertrand Russell, with input from his young student Ludwig Wittgenstein, developed the concept and argues for a reformed language based on pure logic. Despite Russell’s own future doubts surrounding the concept, this founding and definitive work in analytical philosophy by one of the world’s most significant philosophers is a remarkable attempt to establish a novel way of thinking.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918) 1. Facts and Propositions 2. Particulars, Predicates, and Relations 3. Atomic and Molecular Propositions 4. Propositions and Facts with More than One Verb: Beliefs, Etc 5. General Propositions and Existence 6. Descriptions and Incomplete Symbols 7. The Theory of Types and Symbolism: Classes 123 8. Excursions into Metaphysics: What There Is Logical Atomism (1924) Bibliography Chronological Tables Index

In diesem Buch diskutiert Oliver Schott verschiedene metaethische Ansatze ausgehend von der Kontroverse zwischen Internalismus und Externalismus bezuglich praktischer Grunde. Er entwickelt eine nichtkantianische Variante des Konstruktivismus, der sich sowohl phanomenologisch als auch hinsichtlich einer Grundlegung der Moralphilosophie als uberzeugendste Alternative erweist.