Analytic philosophy is often contrasted withcontinental philosophy,[j] which was coined as a catch-all term for other methods that were prominent incontinental Europe,[k] most notablyexistentialism,phenomenology, andHegelianism.[l][m][n] There is widespread influence and debate between the analytic and continental traditions; some philosophers see the differences between the two traditions as being based on institutions, relationships, and ideology, rather than anything of significant philosophical substance.[22][23] The distinction has also been drawn between "analytic" beingacademic or technical philosophy and "continental" beingliterary philosophy.[o][p]
Franz Brentano introduced the problem of intentionality.
Analytic philosophy was deeply influenced by what is calledAustrian realism in the former state ofAustria-Hungary, so much so that Michael Dummett has remarked that analytic philosophy is better characterized as Anglo-Austrian rather than the usual Anglo-American.[28]
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was a Germangeometry professor at theUniversity of Jena who is understood as the father of analytic philosophy. Frege proved influential as aphilosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. He advocatedlogicism, the project of reducingarithmetic to pure logic. (Begriffsschrift), 1879 Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884), where he argued for the logicist thesis. His work Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Vol. I, 1893; Vol. II, 1903) attempted to derive arithmetic from logic.
As a result of his logicist project, Frege developedpredicate logic in his bookBegriffsschrift (English:Concept-script, 1879), which allowed for a much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancientAristotelian logic. An example of this is theproblem of multiple generality. "Funktion und Begriff" (1891), which generalized the concept of function, and "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (1892), which introduced the distinction between sense and reference. "Über Begriff und Gegenstand" (1892) discussed concepts and objects, and "Der Gedanke" (1918) presented his theory of "Thoughts".
Neo-Kantianism dominated the late 19th century in German philosophy. Edmund Husserl's 1891 bookPhilosophie der Arithmetik argued that the concept of thecardinal number derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them.[31]
In contrast to this "psychologism", Frege inThe Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) andThe Basic Laws of Arithmetic (German:Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893–1903), argued similarly toPlato orBolzano that mathematics and logic have their own public objects, independent of the private judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians. Following Frege, the logicists tended to advocate a kind ofmathematical Platonism.
The first recorded use of the term "analytic philosophers" occurred inJohn Wisdom's 1931 work, "Interpretation and Analysis in Relation to Bentham's Theory of Definition", which expounded onBentham's concept of "paraphrasis": "that sort of exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into a proposition, having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has not for its subject any other than a fictitious entity".[35] At first Wisdom referred to "logic-analytic philosophers", then to "analytic philosophers". According to Michael Beaney, "the explicit articulation of the idea of paraphrasis in the work of both Wisdom in Cambridge andRyle in Oxford represents a definite stage in the construction of analytic philosophy as a tradition".[35]
Analytic philosophy in the narrower sense of 20th and 21st century anglophone philosophy is usually thought to begin withCambridge philosophers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore's rejection ofHegelianism for being obscure; or the "revolt against idealism"—see for example Moore's "A Defence of Common Sense".[36][q] Russell summed up Moore's influence:
"G. E. Moore...took the lead in rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation. Bradley had argued that everything common sense believes in is mere appearance; we reverted to the opposite extreme, and that everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy of theology, supposes real. With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist if no one was aware of them, and also that there is a pluralistic timeless world of Platonic ideas."[38]
An important aspect of Hegelianism and British idealism waslogical holism—the opinion that there are aspects of the world that can be known only by knowing the whole world. This is closely related to thedoctrine of internal relations, the opinion thatrelations between items areinternal relations, that is, essentialproperties of the nature of those items. Russell and Moore in response promulgatedlogical atomism and the doctrine ofexternal relations—the belief that the world consists ofindependent facts.[39][r]
Inspired by developments in modernformal logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions.[4]Logical form would be made clear bysyntax.
For example, the English wordis has three distinct meanings, which predicate logic can express as follows:
For the sentence 'the catis asleep', theis ofpredication means that "x is P" (denoted as P(x)).
For the sentence 'thereis a cat', theis of existence means that "there is an x" (∃x).
For the sentence 'threeis half of six', theis of identity means that "x is the same as y" (x=y).
From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like Frege, Russell, Moore, and Russell's studentLudwig Wittgenstein emphasized creating anideal language for philosophical analysis, which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their opinion, often made philosophers incorrect.
Russell famously discovered theparadox inBasic Law V which undermined Frege's logicist project. However, like Frege, Russell argued that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals, inThe Principles of Mathematics (1903). He also argued forMeinongianism.[41]
During his early career, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, thinking it could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. This was done most famously in histheory ofdefinite descriptions in "On Denoting", published inMind in 1905.[42] Russell here argues against Meinongianism. He argues allnames (aside from demonstratives likethis orthat) are disguised definite descriptions, using this to solve ascriptions of nonexistence. This position came to be calleddescriptivism.
Ludwig Wittgenstein developed a comprehensive system of logical atomism with apicture theory of meaning in hisTractatus Logico-Philosophicus (German:Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, 1921) sometimes known as simply theTractatus. He claimed the universe is the totality of actual states of affairs and that these states of affairs can be expressed and mirrored by the language of first-order predicate logic. Thus, apicture of the universe can be constructed by expressing facts in the form of atomic propositions and linking them usinglogical operators. TheTractatus introduced philosophers to thetruth table method.
Wittgenstein thought he had solved all the problems of philosophy with theTractatus. The work further ultimately concludes that all of its propositions are meaningless, illustrated with aladder one must toss away after climbing up it.
Logical positivists used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account of knowledge.[45] They adopted theverification principle, according to which every meaningful statement is eitheranalytic or synthetic. The truths of logic and mathematics weretautologies, and those of science were verifiable empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgments; anything else was nonsense.
This led the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy, especially those ofmetaphysics, as meaningless. It had the additional effect of making (ethical and aesthetic) value judgments (as well as religious statements and beliefs) meaningless. Logical positivists therefore typically considered philosophy as having aminimal function. For them, philosophy concerned the clarification of thoughts, rather than having a distinct subject matter of its own.
Several logical positivists were Jewish, such as Neurath,Hans Hahn,Philipp Frank,Friedrich Waissmann, and Reichenbach. Others, like Carnap, were gentiles but socialists or pacifists. With the coming to power ofAdolf Hitler andNazism in 1933, many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled to Britain and the United States, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in anglophone countries.
The logical positivists saw their rejection of metaphysics in some ways as a recapitulation of a quote byDavid Hume:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.[46]
AfterWorld War II, from the late 1940s to the 1950s, analytic philosophy became involved with ordinary-language analysis. This resulted in two main trends.
One strain of language analysis continued Wittgenstein's later philosophy, from thePhilosophical Investigations (1953), which differed dramatically from his early work of theTractatus. The criticisms ofFrank P. Ramsey on color and logical form in theTractatus led to some of Wittgenstein's first doubts with regard to his early philosophy. Philosophers refer to them like two different philosophers: "early Wittgenstein" and "later Wittgenstein". In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein develops the concept of a "language-game" and, rather than his prior picture theory of meaning, advocates a theory ofmeaning as use. It also contains theprivate language argument and the notion offamily resemblance.
The other trend was known as "Oxford philosophy", in contrast to earlier analytic Cambridge philosophers (including the early Wittgenstein) who thought philosophers should avoid the deceptive trappings of natural language by constructing ideal languages. Influenced by Moore'sCommon Sense and what they perceived as the later Wittgenstein'squietism, the Oxford philosophers claimed that ordinary language already represents many subtle distinctions not recognized in the formulation of traditional philosophical theories or problems.
Gilbert Ryle
While schools such as logical positivism emphasize logical terms, which are supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary-language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. The most prominent ordinary-language philosophers during the 1950s wereP. F. Strawson,J. L. Austin, andGilbert Ryle.[47]
Ordinary-language philosophers often sought to resolve philosophical problems by showing them to be the result of misunderstanding ordinary language. Ryle, inThe Concept of Mind (1949), criticized Cartesiandualism, arguing in favor of disposing of "Descartes' myth" via recognizing "category errors".
Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism of Russell's theory of descriptions explained in the latter's famous "On Denoting" article. In his bookIndividuals (1959), Strawson examines our conceptions of basicparticulars. Austin, in the posthumously publishedHow to Do Things with Words (1962), emphasized the theory ofspeech acts and the ability of words todo things (e.g. "I promise") and not just say things. This influenced several fields to undertake what is called aperformative turn. InSense and Sensibilia (1962), Austin criticizedsense-data theories.
One difference with respect to early analytic philosophy was the revival of metaphysical theorizing during the second half of the 20th century, and metaphysics remains a fertile topic of research. Although many discussions are continuations of old ones from previous decades and centuries, the debates remain active.[50]
Wilfred Sellars's criticism of the "Myth of the Given", inEmpiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956), challenged logical positivism by arguing against sense-data theories. In his "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" (1962), Sellars distinguishes between the "manifest image" and the "scientific image" of the world. Sellars's goal of asynoptic philosophy that unites the everyday and scientific views of reality is the foundation and archetype of what is sometimes called the Pittsburgh School, whose members includeRobert Brandom,John McDowell, andJohn Haugeland.
From a Logical Point of View also contains Quine's essay "On What There Is" (1948), which elucidates Russell's theory of descriptions and contains Quine's famous dictum ofontological commitment, "To be is to be the value of avariable". He also dubbed the problem of nonexistencePlato's beard.
Quine sought to naturalize philosophy and saw philosophy as continuous with science, but instead of logical positivism advocated a kind ofsemantic holism andontological relativity, which explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. In his magnum opusWord and Object (1960), Quine introduces the idea ofradical translation, an introduction to his theory of theindeterminacy of translation, and specifically to prove theinscrutability of reference.
According to one author,Naming and Necessity "played a large role in the implicit, but widespread, rejection of the view—so popular among ordinary language philosophers—that philosophy is nothing more than the analysis of language."[54]
Kripke was influential in arguing that flaws in common theories of descriptions and proper names are indicative of larger misunderstandings of themetaphysics of necessity andpossibility. Kripke also argued thatnecessity is a metaphysical notion distinct from theepistemic notion ofa priori, and that there arenecessary truths that are knowna posteriori, such as that water is H2O.[55]
American philosopherDavid Lewis defended a number of elaborate metaphysical theories. In works such asOn the Plurality of Worlds (1986) andCounterfactuals (1973) he argued formodal realism andcounterpart theory – the belief in real, concretepossible worlds. According to Lewis, "actual" is merely an indexical label we give a world when we are in it. Lewis also defended what he called Humeansupervenience, acounterfactual theory ofcausation,[57] and contributed toabstract object theory.[58] He became closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years.
The theory of special relativity seems to advocate a B-theory of time. David Lewis's perdurantism, orfour-dimensionalism, requires a B-theory of time.[67]A. N. Prior, who inventedtense logic, advocated the A-theory of time.
In the 21st century, some philosophers have sought to revive forms of idealism within the analytic tradition. One notable example is the work ofBernardo Kastrup, who has developed a metaphysical framework known asanalytic idealism. According to this view, reality is fundamentally constituted by consciousness rather than matter; the physical world is interpreted as an appearance or representation within a universal field of experiential states. Individual minds are regarded as dissociated segments of that underlying, transpersonal consciousness.[69]
Kastrup’s analytic idealism aims to provide a rigorous, scientifically consistent form of idealism that avoids the traditional difficulties of solipsism and subjective relativism. It seeks to resolve the so-calledhard problem of consciousness by taking experience as ontologically fundamental while preserving an objective external world as a shared structure within universal consciousness.[70] The theory has been discussed in contemporary debates onmetaphysics and thephilosophy of mind, particularly in relation to challenges tophysicalism andpanpsychism.[71]
While analytic idealism remains a minority position, it represents a renewed attempt to articulate an idealist ontology using the conceptual clarity and argumentative methods characteristic of analytic philosophy.
Edmund Gettier helped to revitalize analytic epistemology.
Owing largely toEdmund Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?",[72] and the so-calledGettier problem, epistemology has enjoyed a resurgence as a topic of analytic philosophy during the last 50 years. A large portion of current epistemological research is intended to resolve the problems that Gettier's examples presented to the traditional "justified true belief" model of knowledge, found as early as Plato's dialogueTheaetetus. These include developingtheories of justification to deal with Gettier's examples, or giving alternatives to the justified-true-belief model.
What do we know? or What is the extent of our knowledge?
How do we know? or What is the criterion for deciding whether we have knowledge in any particular case?
An answer to either set of questions will allow us to devise a means of answering the other. Answering the former question-set first is calledparticularism, whereas answering the latter set first is calledmethodism. A third solution isskepticism, or doubting there is such a thing as knowledge.
Epistemic closure is the claim that knowledge is closed underentailment; in other words epistemic closure is aproperty or theprinciple that if a subject knows, and knows thatentails, then can thereby come to know.[79] Mostepistemological theories involve a closure principle, and many skeptical arguments assume a closure principle. InProof of An External World, G. E. Moore uses closure in his famous anti-skeptical "here is one hand" argument. Shortly before his death, Wittgenstein wroteOn Certainty in response to Moore.
In his bookFact, Fiction, and Forecast,Nelson Goodman introduced the "new riddle of induction", so-called by analogy withHume's classicalproblem of induction. Goodman's famous example was to introduce the predicatesgrue and bleen. "Grue" applies to all things before a certain timet, just in case they are green, but also just in case they are blue after timet; and "bleen" applies to all things before a certain timet, just in the case they are blue, but also just in case they are green after timet.
Other, related topics of contemporary research include debates over basic knowledge, the nature ofevidence, the value of knowledge,epistemic luck,virtue epistemology, the role ofintuitions in justification, and treating knowledge as a primitive concept.
Due to the commitments toempiricism andsymbolic logic in the early analytic period, early analytic philosophers often thought that inquiry in the ethical domain could not be made rigorous enough to merit any attention.[81] It was only with the emergence of ordinary-language philosophers that ethics started to become an acceptable area of inquiry for analytic philosophers.[81] Philosophers working within the analytic tradition have gradually come to distinguish three major types of moral philosophy.
Meta-ethics, which investigates moral terms and concepts;[82]
Normative ethics, which examines and produces normative ethical judgments;
Applied ethics, which investigates how existing normative principles should be applied to difficult or borderline cases, often cases created by new technology or new scientific knowledge.
The second is founded on logical positivism and its attitude that unverifiable statements are meaningless. As a result, they avoided normative ethics and instead beganmeta-ethical investigations into the nature of moral terms, statements, and judgments.
The logical positivists opined that statements aboutvalue—including all ethical and aesthetic judgments—arenon-cognitive; that is, they cannot be objectively verified or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted anemotivist theory, which was that value judgments expressed the attitude of the speaker. It is also known as the boo/hurrah theory. For example, in this view, saying, "Murder is wrong", is equivalent to saying, "Boo to murder", or saying the word "murder" with a particular tone of disapproval.
While analytic philosophers generally accepted non-cognitivism, emotivism had many deficiencies. It evolved into more sophisticated non-cognitivist theories, such as theexpressivism ofCharles Stevenson, and theuniversal prescriptivism ofR. M. Hare, which was based on J. L. Austin's philosophy ofspeech acts.
As non-cognitivism, the is/ought distinction, and the naturalistic fallacy were questioned, analytic philosophers showed a renewed interest in the traditional questions of moral philosophy.
Philippa Foot defendednaturalist moral realism and contributed several essays attacking other theories.[u] Foot introduced the famous "trolley problem" into the ethical discourse.[83]
Perhaps the most influential critic wasElizabeth Anscombe, whose monographIntention was called byDonald Davidson "the most important treatment ofaction since Aristotle".[84] A favorite student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" declared the "is-ought" impasse to be unproductive.J.O. Urmson's article "On Grading" also called the is/ought distinction into question.
The first half of the 20th century was marked by skepticism toward, and neglect of, normative ethics. However, contemporary normative ethics is dominated by three schools:consequentialism,virtue ethics, anddeontology.[v]
During the early 20th century,utilitarianism was the only non-skeptical type of ethics to remain popular among analytic philosophers. However, as the influence of logical positivism declined mid-century, analytic philosophers had a renewed interest in ethics.Utilitarianism: For and Against was written withJ. J. C. Smart arguing for and Bernard Williams arguing against.
Anscombe, Foot, andAlasdair Macintyre'sAfter Virtue sparked a revival ofAristotle'svirtue ethical approach. This increased interest in virtue ethics has been dubbed the "aretaic turn" mimicking the linguistic turn.
Since around 1970, a significant feature of analytic philosophy has been the emergence ofapplied ethics—an interest in the application of moral principles to specific practical issues. The philosophers following this orientation view ethics as involving humanistic values, which involve practical implications and applications in the way people interact and lead their lives socially.[86]
Isaiah Berlin had a lasting influence on both analytic political philosophy and liberalism with his lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty".[citation needed] Berlin defined 'negative liberty' as absence of coercion or interference in private actions. 'Positive liberty' Berlin maintained, could be thought of as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do.
Current analytic political philosophy owes much toJohn Rawls, who in a series of papers from the 1950s onward (most notably "Two Concepts of Rules" and "Justice as Fairness") and his 1971 bookA Theory of Justice, produced a sophisticated defense of a generally liberalegalitarian account of distributive justice. Rawls introduced the term theveil of ignorance.
Another development of political philosophy was the emergence of the school ofanalytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply techniques of analytic philosophy and modern social science to clarify the theories ofKarl Marx and his successors. The best-known member of this school isG. A. Cohen, whose 1978 book,Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, is generally considered to represent the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen used logical and linguistic analysis to clarify and defend Marx's materialist conception of history. Other prominent analytical Marxists include the economistJohn Roemer, the social scientistJon Elster, and the sociologistErik Olin Wright. The work of these later philosophers has furthered Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, such asrational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical techniques in the interpretation of Marxian theory.[91]
Cohen himself would later engage directly with Rawlsian political philosophy to advance asocialist theory of justice that contrasts with both traditional Marxism and the theories advanced by Rawls and Nozick. In particular, he indicates Marx's principle offrom each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Although not an analytic philosopher,Jürgen Habermas is another influential—if controversial—author in contemporary analytic political philosophy, whose social theory is a blend of social science, Marxism,neo-Kantianism, and Americanpragmatism.[citation needed]
Communitarians such asAlasdair MacIntyre,Charles Taylor,Michael Walzer, andMichael Sandel advance a critique of liberalism that uses analytic techniques to isolate the main assumptions of liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and then challenges these assumptions. In particular, communitarians challenge the liberal assumption that the individual can be considered as fully autonomous from the community in which he is brought up and lives. Instead, they argue for a conception of the individual that emphasizes the role that the community plays in forming his or her values, thought processes, and opinions. While in the analytic tradition, its major exponents often also engage at length with figures generally considered continental, notablyG. W. F. Hegel andFriedrich Nietzsche.
As a result of logical positivism, as well as what seemed like rejections of the traditional aesthetic notions of beauty and sublimity frompost-modern thinkers, analytic philosophers were slow to consider art and aesthetic judgment.Susanne Langer[92] andNelson Goodman[93] addressed these problems in an analytic style during the 1950s and 1960s. Since Goodman, aesthetics as a discipline for analytic philosophers has flourished.[94]
Arthur Danto argued for a "institutional definition of art" in the 1964 essay "The Artworld" in which Danto coined the term "artworld" (as opposed to the existing "art world", though they mean the same), by which he meant cultural context or "an atmosphere ofart theory".[95]
Rigorous efforts to pursue analyses of traditional aesthetic concepts were performed byGuy Sircello in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in new analytic theories of love,[96] sublimity,[97] and beauty.[98] In the opinion ofWładysław Tatarkiewicz, there are six conditions for the presentation of art: beauty, form, representation, reproduction of reality, artistic expression, and innovation. However, one may not be able to pin down these qualities in a work of art.[99]
George Dickie was an influential philosopher of art. Dickie's studentNoël Carroll is a leading philosopher of art.
Given the linguistic turn, it can be hard to separate logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language in analytic philosophy. Philosophy of language is a topic that has decreased in activity during the last four decades, as evidenced by the fact that few major philosophers today treat it as a primary research topic. While the debate remains fierce, it is still strongly influenced by those authors from the first half of the century, e.g. Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Tarski, and Quine.
Hilary Putnam used the Twin Earth thought experiment to argue forsemantic externalism, or the view that the meanings of words are not psychological.Donald Davidson uses the thought experiment of Swampman to advocate for semantic externalism.
Kripke inWittgenstein on Rules and Private Language provides a rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language and, so, calls into question the idea of meaning. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date". Theportmanteau "Kripkenstein" has been coined as a term for a fictional person who holds the views expressed by Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein.
Another influential philosopher,Pavel Tichý initiated Transparent Intensional Logic, an original theory of thelogical analysis ofnatural languages—the theory is devoted to the problem of saying exactly what it is that we learn, know, and can communicate when we come to understand what a sentence means.
John Searle suggests that the obsession with the philosophy of language during the 20th century has been superseded by an emphasis on thephilosophy of mind.[101]
Motivated by the logical positivists' interest in verificationism,logical behaviorism was the most prominenttheory of mind of analytic philosophy for the first half of the 20th century.[102] Behaviorism later became much less popular, in favor of eithertype physicalism orfunctionalism. During this period, topics of the philosophy of mind were often related strongly to topics ofcognitive science, such asmodularity orinnateness.
Behaviorists such asB. F. Skinner tended to opine either that statements about the mind were equivalent tostatements about behavior and dispositions to behave in particular ways or that mental states were directly equivalent to behavior and dispositions to behave.
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam criticized behaviorism by arguing that it confuses the symptoms of mental states with the mental states themselves, positing "super Spartans" who never display signs of pain.[103]
Type physicalism or type identity theory identified mental states with brain states. Former students of Ryle at theUniversity of AdelaideJ. J. C. Smart andUllin Place argued for type physicalism.
The view ofeliminative materialism is most closely associated withPaul andPatricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes, and withDaniel Dennett, who is generally considered an eliminativist aboutqualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness.
Finally, analytic philosophy has featured a certain number of philosophers who weredualists, and recently forms ofproperty dualism have had a resurgence; the most prominent representative isDavid Chalmers.[104] Kripke also makes a notable argument for dualism.[105]
Akin to the medieval debate on universals, between realists, idealists, and nominalists; the philosophy of mathematics has the debate between logicists or platonists, conceptualists orintuitionists, andformalists.[111]
Gödel was a platonist who postulated a special kind of mathematical intuition that lets us perceive mathematical objects directly. Quine and Putnam argued for platonism with theindispensability argument.Crispin Wright, along withBob Hale, led a Neo-Fregean revival with his workFrege's Conception of Numbers as Objects.[112]
...analytic philosophy has been a very heterogeneous 'movement'.... some forms of analytic philosophy have proven very sympathetic to the philosophy of religion and have provided a philosophical mechanism for responding to other more radical and hostile forms of analytic philosophy.[113]: 3
As with the study of ethics, early analytic philosophy tended to avoid the study ofreligion, largely dismissing (as per the logical positivists) the subject as a part ofmetaphysics and therefore meaningless.[w] The demise of logical positivism led to a renewed interest in the philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers not only to introduce new problems, but to re-study classical topics such as theexistence of God, the nature ofmiracles, theproblem of evil, the rationality of belief in God, concepts of the nature of God, and several others.[114] TheSociety of Christian Philosophers was established in 1978.
Plantinga was awarded theTempleton Prize in 2017 and was once described byTime magazine as "America's leading orthodoxProtestant philosopher of God".[115] His seminal workGod and Other Minds (1967) argues that belief in God is a properly basic belief akin to the belief inother minds. Plantinga also developed a modalontological argument inThe Nature of Necessity (1974).
The analytic philosophy of religion has been preoccupied with Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation ofSøren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion.[118] Wittgenstein fought for the Austrian army in theFirst World War and came upon a copy ofLeo Tolstoy'sGospel in Brief. At that time, he underwent some kind of religious conversion.[119]
Using first-hand remarks (which were later published inPhilosophical Investigations,Culture and Value, and other works), philosophers such asPeter Winch andNorman Malcolm developed what has come to be known as "contemplative philosophy", a Wittgensteinian school of thought rooted in the "Swansea school", and which includes Wittgensteinians such asRush Rhees, Peter Winch, andD.Z. Phillips, among others.
The name "contemplative philosophy" was coined by D. Z. Phillips inPhilosophy's Cool Place, which rests on an interpretation of a passage from Wittgenstein'sCulture and Value.[120] This interpretation was first labeled "WittgensteinianFideism" byKai Nielsen, but those who consider themselves members of the Swansea school have relentlessly and repeatedly rejected this construal as a caricature of Wittgenstein's position; this is especially true of Phillips.[121] Responding to this interpretation, Nielsen and Phillips became two of the most prominent interpreters of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.[122]
Science and thephilosophy of science have also had increasingly significant roles in analytic metaphysics. The theory of special relativity has had a profound effect on the philosophy of time, and quantum physics is routinely discussed in the free will debate.[50] The weight given to scientific evidence is largely due to commitments of philosophers toscientific realism andnaturalism. Others will see a commitment to using science in philosophy asscientism.
^"Without exception, the best philosophy departments in the United States are dominated by analytic philosophy, and among the leading philosophers in the United States, all but a tiny handful would be classified as analytic philosophers. Practitioners of types of philosophizing that are not in the analytic tradition—such as phenomenology, classicalpragmatism,existentialism, orMarxism—feel it necessary to define their position in relation to analytic philosophy."[2]
^Quote on the definition: "'Analytic' philosophy today names astyle of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities."[5]
^"analytical philosophy [is] too narrow a label, since [it] is not generally a matter of taking a word or concept and analyzing it (whatever exactly that might be). [...] This tradition emphasizes clarity, rigor, argument, theory, truth. It is not a tradition that aims primarily for inspiration or consolation or ideology. Nor is it particularly concerned with 'philosophy of life', though parts of it are. This kind of philosophy is more like science than religion, more like mathematics than poetry—though it is neither science nor mathematics."[6]
^According toScott Soames, "an implicit commitment—albeit faltering and imperfect—to the ideals of clarity, rigor and argumentation" and it "aims at truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement [...] the goal in analytic philosophy is to discover what is true, not to provide a useful recipe for living one's life". Soames also states that analytic philosophy is characterized by "a more piecemeal approach. There is, I think, a widespread presumption within the tradition that it is often possible to make philosophical progress by intensively investigating a small, circumscribed range of philosophical issues while holding broader, systematic questions in abeyance".[7]
^"[I]t is difficult to give a precise definition of 'analytic philosophy' since it is not so much a specific doctrine as a loose concatenation of approaches to problems."[9]
^"I thinkSluga is right in saying 'it may be hopeless to try to determine the essence of analytic philosophy.' Nearly every proposed definition has been challenged by some scholar. [...] [W]e are dealing with a family resemblance concept."[10]
^"The answer to the title question, then, is that analytic philosophy is a tradition held togetherboth by ties of mutual influenceand by family resemblances."[11]
^The 1950s saw challenges to much which had been taken for granted, and roughly by 1960 anglophone philosophy began to incorporate a wider range of interests, opinions, and methods.[16] Despite this, most philosophers in Britain and America still consider themselves "analytic philosophers".[5] They have done so largely by expanding the notion of "analytic philosophy" from the specific programs that dominated anglophone philosophy before 1960 to a much more general notion of an "analytic" style,[5][16] characterized by mathematical precision and thoroughness about a specific topic, and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics".[16]
^"Most non-analytic philosophers of the twentieth century do not belong to continental philosophy."[17]
^The distinction rests upon a confusion of geographical and methodological terms, as if one were to classify cars into front-wheel drive and Japanese. [...] the distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy rests upon a confused comparison of methodological and geographical categories.[18]
^"Analytic philosophy is mainly associated with the contemporary English-speaking world, but it is by no means the only important philosophical tradition. In this volume two other immensely rich and important such traditions are introduced: Indian philosophy, and philosophical thought in Europe from the time of Hegel."[19]
^"So, despite a few overlaps, analytical philosophy is not difficult to distinguish broadly [...] from other modern movements, like phenomenology, say, or existentialism, or from the large amount of philosophizing that has also gone on in the present century within frameworks deriving from other influential thinkers like Aquinas, Hegel, or Marx."[20]
^Steven D. Hales described analytic philosophy as one of three types of philosophical method practiced in the West: "[i]n roughly reverse order by number of proponents, they are phenomenology, ideological philosophy, and analytic philosophy".[21]
^"The distinction which Russell sets up between 'technical' philosophy and 'literary' philosophy has had many incarnations, from Plato's 'ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy'..."[24]
^The tradition has also been criticized for excessive formalism, ahistoricism, and aloofness towards alternative disciplines and outsiders.[25][26][27] Some have tried to develop apostanalytic philosophy.
^"Analytic philosophy opposed right from its beginning English neo-Hegelianism of Bradley's sort and similar ones. It did not only criticize the latter's denial of the existence of an external world (anyway an unjust criticism), but also the bombastic, obscure style of Hegel's writings."[37]
^Russell once explained, "Hegel had maintained that all separateness is illusory and that the universe is more like a pot oftreacle than a heap ofshot. I therefore said, "The universe is exactly like a heap of shot."[40]
^ Named in reference to Waismann'sLogik, Sprache, Philosophie
^Anscombe introduced the term "consequentialism" into the philosophical lexicon.
^A notable exception is the series ofMichael B. Foster's 1934–36Mind articles involving the Christian doctrine of creation and the rise of modern science.
^John Searle (2003),Contemporary Philosophy in the United States in N. Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James (eds.),The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed., (Blackwell, 2003), p. 1.
^Colin McGinn,The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (HarperCollins, 2002), p. xi.
^Soames, Scott (2003).The dawn of analysis (2nd print., 1st papers. print ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. pp. xiii–xvii.ISBN978-0-691-11573-3.
^An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) sect. 12, pt. 3
^Longworth, Guy (2017),"John Langshaw Austin", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.),The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved21 July 2020
^S. Yablo and A. Gallois,Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 72, (1998), pp. 229–261, 263–283first partArchived 12 September 2011 at theWayback Machine
^abSoames, Scott. 2005.Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 2: The Age of Meaning.Princeton University Press. Cited in Byrne, Alex and Hall, Ned. 2004. 'Necessary Truths'.Boston Review October/November 2004.
^abZimmerman, Dean W., "Prologue" inOxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 1 (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. xix.
^Bird, Alexander; Tobin, Emma (2024),"Natural Kinds", in Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.),The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2024 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved22 April 2024
^Bonjour, Laurence, "Recent Work on the Internalism–Externalism Controversy" in Dancy, Sosa, and Steup (eds.),A Companion to Epistemology, Second Edition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 33.
^Rahman, Shahid; Symons, John; Gabbay, Dov M.; bendegem, jean paul van (2009).Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 92.ISBN978-1-4020-2807-6.
^Ikuenobe, Polycarp (2006).Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions. Oxford: Lexington Books. p. 104.ISBN978-0-7391-1131-4.
^Brennan, Andrew and Yeuk-Sze Lo (2002). "Environmental Ethics"§2Archived 1 August 2013 at theWayback Machine, inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
^Nelson Goodman,Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976. Based on his 1960–61 John Locke lectures.
^Kivy, Peter, "Introduction: Aesthetics Today" inThe Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 4.
^Adajian, Thomas."The Definition of Art",The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London, Oct 23, 2007.
^Guy Sircello,Love and Beauty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
^Guy Sircello "How Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 541–550
^Guy Sircello,A New Theory of Beauty. Princeton Essays on the Arts, 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
^For summaries and some criticism of the different higher-order theories, see Van Gulick, Robert (2006) "Mirror Mirror – Is That All?" In Kriegel & Williford (eds.),Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The final draft is also available here"Mirror Mirror – Is That All?"(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2 October 2008. Retrieved23 September 2008.. For Van Gulick's own view, see Van Gulick, Robert. "Higher-Order Global States HOGS: An Alternative Higher-Order Model of Consciousness." In Gennaro, R.J., (ed.)Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
^Phillips, D.Z. (1999).Philosophy's Cool Place. Cornell University Press. The quote is from Wittgenstein'sCulture and Value (2e): "My ideal is a certain coolness. A temple providing a setting for the passions without meddling with them."
^Hull, David L. andRuse, Michael, "Preface" inThe Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. xix, xx.
^Lennox, James G., "Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism" in Sakar and Plutynski (eds.),A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Blackwell Publishing, 2008), p. 89.
Desmet, Ronald; Irvine, Andrew David (2022)."Alfred North Whitehead".The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved1 April 2024.
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