Top

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Contemporary Analytic Philosophy Core Readings

by: Baillie, James

Contemporary Analytic Philosophy Core Readings

by: Baillie, James

ISBN 13:
9780130990686
ISBN 10:
013099068X
Edition: 2nd
Format: Paperback
Copyright: 04/17/2002
Publisher: Pearson

Rent

Sorry, this item is currently unavailable.

Free Shipping On Every Order

Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.

Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time

Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.

Contemporary Analytic Philosophy Core Readings > ISBN13: 9780130990686

Summary

This self-contained anthology collects some of the most influential primary source contributions to contemporary analytic philosophy, together with introductions and commentaries for each selection. It traces the development of a few central themes in analytic philosophy, in sufficient detailfrom philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical logic.Frege, Russell, Moore. Wittgenstein. Logical Empiricism. Ordinary Language Philosophy. Quine. Truth, Meaning, and Interpretation. Reference and Essence.For anyone interested in Analytic Philosophy.

Preface

Frege, Russell, Moore

(76)

Introduction to Gottlob Frege

(7)

``Sense and Reference,''

(16)

Gottlob Frege

Introduction to Bertrand Russell

(7)

``On Denoting,''

(11)

Bertrand Russell

Selections from The Philosophy of Logical Atomism

(14)

Bertrand Russell

Introduction to G.E. Moore

(5)

``Proof of an External World,''

(16)

G.E. Moore

Wittgenstein

(54)

Introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein

(12)

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (abridged)

(21)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Selections from Philosophical Investigations

110

(21)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Logical Empiricism

131

(55)

Introduction to Logical Empiricism

131

(10)

``The Foundations of Knowledge,''

141

(14)

Moritz Schlick

``The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,''

155

(17)

Rudolf Carnap

``Empiricism, Semantics, Ontology,''

172

(14)

Rudolf Carnap

Ordinary Language Philosophy

186

(76)

Introduction to Gilbert Ryle

186

(5)

``Knowing How and Knowing That,''

191

(10)

Gilbert Ryle

Introduction to J.L. Austin

201

(6)

Selections from Sense and Sensibilia

207

(18)

J .L. Austin

Introduction to P.F. Strawson

225

(5)

``On Referring,''

230

(19)

P.F. Strawson

Introduction to H.P. Grice

249

(5)

``Meaning,''

254

(8)

H.P. Grice

Quine

262

(62)

Introduction to W.V. Quine

262

(10)

``Two Dogmas of Empiricism,''

272

(18)

W.V. Quine

``In Defense of a Dogma,''

290

(12)

H.P. Grice

P.F. Strawson

``Ontological Relativity,''

302

(22)

W.V. Quine

Truth, Meaning, and Interpretation

324

(57)

Introduction to Alfred Tarski

324

(6)

``The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics,''

330

(17)

Alfred Tarski

Introduction to Donald Davidson

347

(7)

``Truth and Meaning,''

354

(15)

Donald Davidson

``Radical Interpretation,''

369

(12)

Donald Davidson

Reference and Essence

381

(1)

Introduction to Saul Kripke

381

(7)

``Identity and Necessity,''

388

(24)

Saul Kripke

Introduction to Externalism

412

(8)

``Meaning and Reference,''

420

(10)

Hilary Putnam

Selections from ``Individualism and the Mental,''

430

Tyler Burge

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

This anthology collects some of the most important contributions to contemporary analytic philosophy. Both "contemporary" and "analytic" can be given contrastive definitions. That is, I mean "contemporary" as opposed to "modern," and thus my selections are taken from the past century or so. I mean "analytic" as distinct from "continental" philosophy, though with some caveats. First, I do not want this anthology to contribute to the split between philosophy in English-speaking countries and elsewhere. This antagonism has decreased in the past couple of decades to mutual benefit. Second, some of the greatest analytic philosophers were from Europe, particularly Austria and Germany, and need to be understood against a background of philosophical activity that includes continental post-Kantian philosophy. As Michael Dummett recently remarked, "The sources of analytical philosophy were the writings of philosophers who wrote, principally or exclusively, in the German language; and this would have remained obvious to everyone had it not been for the plague of Nazism which drove so many German-speaking philosophers across the Atlantic" (1993, p. ix). The idea of analytic philosophy clearly rests on some notion of analysis.Analysis consists of breaking down a complex system into its component parts, thereby making the underlying elements and the relations between them explicit. The method of analysis was modeled on chemical analysis, whereby a compound decomposes into its ultimate constituents. The properties of the compound are explained in terms of its elements and their interrelations. The aim of philosophical analysis was to become clear about what was being said or thought. The new logic provided a systematic means for doing this, providing a perspicuous representation of sentences and the patterns of inference to and from each one. This, it was hoped, would prevent wooly speculation, and reveal grand metaphysical theories to be built on sand. While the notion of analysis was prevalent from the beginnings of the movement, the specific expression "analytic (or analytical) philosophy" entered common usage only in the 1950s. In other words, the classification is virtually retroactive, since by that time any substantive or methodological unity had long dispersed into a wide variety of approaches. We can identify several roots of what we now regard as the analytic tradition. First, in Germany, there was the rejection of psychologism by Gottlob Frege, as summarized in his dictum, "Always separate the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective:" That is, by making a strict distinction between logic on the one hand, and epistemology and psychology on the other, he separated the act of thinking from the content of thoughts themselves. Philosophy is concerned only with the latter. Second, in England, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell urged a return to the method of analysis in place of the dialectical methods of the then dominant Absolute Idealists such as F.H. Bradley and J.M.E. McTaggart (whose middle initial "M," incidentally, stood for "McTaggart"). Moore and Russell opposed "the dependence of the object of knowledge on the knower, the monism of the Absolute, the coherence theory of truth, the unreality of relations and the doctrine of internal relations" (Hacker 1998, p.15). Third, there was the development of formal logic and its application to natural languages, firstly by Frege and then by Russell. Frege''s criticisms of psychologism were allied to his new conception of logic as the systematic study of patterns of valid inference. Russell held that ordinary language disguised the true logical form of the propositions expressed, and that this was a major cause of philosophical error. Russell and Moore represent two sides of an ongoing tension in analytic philosophy in the first part of this century in that they disagree over the status of ordinary natural languages. Russell follows Frege in seeing natural languages as fundamentally flawed, being subject to vagueness and ambiguity. He believed that reliable philosophical results can be obtained only by devising a logically perfect language in which the implications of any sentence could be derived by a purely formal procedure. Moore, on the other hand, had no revisionary aims concerning ordinary language and saw it as an adequate tool for achieving philosophical results, providing it is used with care. While all philosophers in this anthology until Quine regarded some form of analysis as central to philosophical method, they differed over precisely what was being analyzed. Moore and Russell originally held that they were analyzing facts, that is, bits of reality. This was sometimes described as the analysis of propositions, and their constituent concepts, into their basic elements. By contrast, Wittgenstein''s Tractatusanalyzed sentences and thought contents as a means of revealing the structure of reality. The Positivists focused exclusively on the analysis of linguistic expressions without these metaphysical ambitions. However, despite these differences regarding what was being analyzed, all these philosophers regarded analysis as a reductiveenterprise, that of breaking up a complex into its simper constituent parts. The early Wittgenstein, and the Positivists following in his wake, established the view that philosophy and analysis were one and the same. Philosophy was therefore a method, not a subject matter. A strict distinction between philosophy and the sciences was thereby fixed. However, by the middle of the century, it had become apparent that most actual attempts at reductive analysis were failures. For example, the Positivists could not successfully formulate a reduction of statements about material objects to those concerning sense-data. Nor could their attempts to reduce discourse about mental states to talk about behavioral dispositions succeed. In the light of these failures, the reductive model of analysis came under scrutiny. Wittgenstein and the "ordinary language philosophers" of mid-century Oxford (represented in this anthology by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, RE Strawson, and H.P. Grice) developed nonreductive methods of analysis. The earlier reductive form of analysis can be seen as vertical, going down from complex to simpler levels, ending with unanalyzable conceptual "atoms:" By contrast, the new method was "connective analysis," to use Strawson''s expression. That is, the lateral relations between concepts were explored without any attempt to reduce one concept to another. Second, they attended to how words were actually used in concrete social contexts, investigating the "grammar," or conditions of appropriate usage, of philosophically problematic concepts. This emphasis on ordinary language appalled Russell, who thought that all that would be revealed by such methods was "the metaphysics of savages:" One point that all philosophers in this anthology until Quine agreed on, albeit for differing reasons, was a strict distinction between philosophy and all empirical disciplines. Prior to Quine, it was held that since philosophy consists of analysis, which is a purely a priori enterprise, philosophy is therefore fundamentally different from the sciences in both its method and its subject matter. This division rested on the assumption that a clear distinction could be given between truths solely due to facts about meanings, and those resting on the way the world is. Quine''s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction undermined a hard distinction between philosophy and empirical disciplines. Indeed, his distrust of intensional notions, and his denial of any objective fact of the matter about what words mean, afforded no room for analysis, at least in its reductive form. Many, particularly in the United States, now follow Quine in regarding philosophy as being continuousw