Analytic philosophy

20th-century tradition of Western philosophy

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Analytic philosophy is a broad movement or tradition within philosophy focused on analysis, which has been dominant within Western philosophy and especially anglophone philosophy since the latter half of the 20th century.[1][2][3] The proliferation of analysis in philosophy began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia.

Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy, coined as a catch-all term for other methods, prominent in continental Europe, most notably existentialism, phenomenology, and Hegelianism.[a][b][c][d]

Analytic philosophy is characterized by clarity of prose and rigor in arguments, making use of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences.[8][e][f] It is also characterized by the linguistic turn, or the notion that thought is only properly characterized by an appeal to language, with its focus on meaning, analysis, and formal logic. Analytic philosophy has developed several new branches of philosophy, notably philosophy of language, modern predicate logic, philosophy of mathematics and mathematical logic, and philosophy of science.[g][h][i][14]

Central figures in its historical development are Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Other important figures in its history include Franz Brentano, the logical positivists (particularly Rudolf Carnap), W. V. O. Quine, Karl Popper, and ordinary language philosophy (such as Gilbert Ryle or J. L. Austin). After the decline of logical positivism, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and others led a revival in metaphysics. Alvin Plantinga led a revival in Christian philosophy. Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny, and others developed an analytic approach to Thomism.

## Characterizing analytic philosophy[edit]

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".[15]

Michael Dummett characterizes analytic philosophy by the linguistic turn and the "extrusion of thoughts from the mind". The former is a belief that a proper understanding of thought can only come from language, and the latter is an anti-idealist stance coming with it.[16] Other definitions often emphasize conceptual analysis: A.P. Martinich draws an analogy between analytic philosophy's interest in conceptual analysis and analytic chemistry, which aims to determine chemical compositions.[17]

Others still will note a dedication to clarity.[18] According to Scott 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".[19]

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.[20] Despite this, many philosophers in Britain and America still consider themselves "analytic philosophers".[9][j] 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,[9][20] characterized by mathematical precision and thoroughness about a specific topic, and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics".[20]

### Criticism[edit]

The tradition has also been criticized for excessive formalism, ahistoricism, and aloofness towards alternative disciplines and outsiders.[22][23][24]

## History of analytic philosophy[edit]

### Brentano[edit]

Franz Brentano in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) through the influence of Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong gave to analytic philosophy the "problem of intentionality" or of aboutness. For Brentano, all mental events have a real, intentional object which the thinking is "about". Meinong is known for his unique ontology of real nonexistent objects.

### Frege[edit]

Gottlob Frege, the father of analytic philosophy.

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was a geometry professor at the University of Jena who is understood as the father of analytic philosophy. Frege proved influential as a philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. He advocated logicism, the project of reducing arithmetic to pure logic.

#### Logic[edit]

As a result of his logicist project, Frege developed predicate logic, which allowed a much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancient Aristotelian logic. Some of these advances were foreshadowed by the likes of the British idealist George Boole and the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce.

#### Number[edit]

Edmund Husserl's 1891 book Philosophie der Arithmetik argued that the concept of the cardinal number derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them.[25] In contrast to this "psychologism," Frege in The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (German: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893–1903), argued similar to Plato or Bolzano 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 of mathematical platonism.

#### Language[edit]

Frege also proved influential in the philosophy of language and analytic philosophy's interest in meaning. Michael Dummett traces the linguistic turn to Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic. Frege's paper On Sense and Reference (1892) is seminal and provides a mediated reference theory. His paper Thought: A Logical Inquiry (1918) reflects both his anti-idealism or anti-psychologism and his interest in language. In the paper he argues for a platonist account of propositions or thoughts.

### Russell[edit]

Russell in 1907.

Analytic philosophy in the narrower sense of 20th and 21st century anglophone philosophy is usually thought to begin with Cambridge philosophers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore's "revolt against idealism" or the rejection of British idealism, a neo-Hegelian movement.[26] Moore and Russell rejected Hegelianism for being obscure—see for example Moore's "A Defence of Common Sense".[k] British idealism as taught by philosophers such as F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) and T. H. Green (1836–1882), dominated English philosophy in the late 19th century.

#### Paradox[edit]

Bertrand Russell, during his early career, was much influenced by Frege. Russell famously discovered the paradox which undermined Frege's logicist project. However, like Frege, Russell argued that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). He also argued for Meinongianism.

#### On Denoting[edit]

Russell sought to resolve various philosophical problems by applying Frege's new logical apparatus, most famously in his theory of definite descriptions in "On Denoting" (1905).[28] Russell here argues against Meinongianism. He argues all names (aside from demonstratives like "this" or "that") are disguised definite descriptions, using this to solve ascriptions of nonexistence. This position came to be called descriptivism.

#### Principia Mathematica[edit]

Later, his book written with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), the seminal text of the logicist project, encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest in the development of symbolic logic. Additionally, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method Russell thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word "is" has three distinct meanings which predicate logic can express as follows:

* For the sentence 'the cat is asleep', the is of predication means that "x is P" (denoted as P(x)).
* For the sentence 'there is a cat', the is of existence means that "there is an x" (∃x).
* For the sentence 'three is half of six', the is of identity means that "x is the same as y" (x=y).

### Ideal language[edit]

Main article: Ideal language philosophy

From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like Frege, Russell and Russell's student Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasized creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis, which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their opinion, often made philosophy invalid. During this phase, Russell and Wittgenstein sought to understand language (and hence philosophical problems) by using logic to formalize how philosophical statements are made.

### Logical atomism[edit]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Russell's criticized the Hegelian view of the doctrine of internal relations. An important aspect of British idealism was logical 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 the opinion that relations between items are internal relations, that is, essential properties of the nature of those items. Russell, along with Wittgenstein, in response promulgated logical atomism and the doctrine of external relations—the belief that the world consists of independent facts.[29] Inspired by developments in modern formal logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions.[18]

#### Early Wittgenstein[edit]

Wittgenstein developed a comprehensive system of logical atomism with a picture theory of meaning in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (German: Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, 1921) sometimes known as simply the Tractatus. 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 a picture of the universe can be constructed by expressing facts in the form of atomic propositions and linking them using logical operators.

### Logical positivism[edit]

(1)

(2)

(3)

Members of the Vienna Circle. From left to right:
(1) Moritz Schlick
(2) Otto Neurath;
(3) Hans Hahn

Main article: Logical positivism

During the late 1920s to 1940s, a group of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle, and another one known as the Berlin Circle, developed Russell and Wittgenstein's philosophy into a doctrine known as "logical positivism" (or logical empiricism). The Vienna Circle was led by Moritz Schlick and included the likes of Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath.[30] Logical positivists used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account of knowledge.[31]

The logical positivists adopted the verification principle, according to which every meaningful statement is either analytic or synthetic. They claimed the truths of logic and mathematics were tautologies, and those of science were verifiable empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgments; anything else was nonsense. Therefore the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy, especially those of metaphysics or ontology, as meaningless.

Logical positivists therefore typically considered philosophy as having a minimal function. For them, philosophy concerned the clarification of thoughts, rather than having a distinct subject matter of its own.

Kurt Goedel, himself a platonist, but a student of Hans Hahn of the Vienna Circle, produced his incompleteness theorems showing Principia Mathematica also failed to reduce arithmetic to logic. This ultimately led to Zermelo Fraenkel Set Theory.

Several members of the Vienna Circle were Jewish such as Neurath, Hahn, Philipp Frank and Friedrich Waissmann. Others, like Carnap, were gentiles but socialists or pacifists. With the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1933, many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled to Britain and the US, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in anglophone countries.

In 1936, Schlick was murdered in Vienna by his former student Hans Nelböck. The same year, A. J. Ayer's work Language Truth and Logic introduced the English speaking world to logical positivism.[l]

### Ordinary language[edit]

Main article: Ordinary language philosophy

After World War II, during the late 1940s and 1950s, analytic philosophy became involved with ordinary-language analysis. This resulted in two main trends.

#### Later Wittgenstein[edit]

One continued Wittgenstein's later philosophy from the Philosophical Investigations, which differed dramatically from his early work of the Tractatus.[m] As a result, 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 of meaning as use.

#### Oxford philosophy[edit]

Portrait of Gilbert Ryle

The other trend, 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, claimed that ordinary language already represents many subtle distinctions not recognized in the formulation of traditional philosophical theories or problems.

While schools such as logical positivism emphasize logical terms, 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 were J. L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle.[33]

Ordinary-language philosophers often sought to dissolve philosophical problems by showing them to be the result of ordinary misunderstanding language. Austin emphasized the theory of speech acts and the ability of words to do things (e. g. "I promise") and not just say things. Ryle in The Concept of Mind criticized dualism, arguing in favor of disposing "Descartes' myth" via recognizing "category errors".

## Contemporary analytic philosophy[edit]

### Metaphysics[edit]

Main article: Metaphysics

One striking difference with respect to early analytic philosophy was the revival of metaphysical theorizing during the second half of the 20th century. Philosophers such as David Kellogg Lewis[34] and David Armstrong[35] developed elaborate theories on a range of topics such as universals,[36][37] causation,[38] possibility and necessity,[39] and abstract objects.[40]

Metaphysics remains a fertile topic of research,. Although many discussions are continuations of old ones from previous decades and centuries, the debate remains active. The philosophy of fiction, the problem of empty names, and the debate over existence's status as a property have all become major concerns, while perennial issues such as free will, possible worlds, and the philosophy of time have been revived.[41][42]

Science has also had an increasingly significant role in 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.[42] The weight given to scientific evidence is largely due to widespread commitments among philosophers to scientific realism and naturalism.

#### Decline of logical positivism[edit]

Among the developments that resulted in the decline of logical positivism and the revival of metaphysical theorizing was Harvard philosopher W. V. O. Quine's attack on the analytic–synthetic distinction in Two Dogmas of Empiricism.[43] Logical positivism was also challenged by the later Wittgenstein and Wilfred Sellars in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.

#### Kripke[edit]

Saul Kripke helped to revive interest in metaphysics among analytic philosophers.

Important also for the revival of metaphysics was the further development of modal logic, especially the work of Saul Kripke and his Naming and Necessity.[n]

Kripke provided a semantics for modal logic, and was widely regarded as reviving theories of essence and identity as respectable topics of philosophical discussion.[44] He argued influentially that flaws in common theories of proper names are indicative of larger misunderstandings of the metaphysics of necessity and possibility.

#### Lewis[edit]

David Lewis in works like On the Plurality of Worlds argued for modal realism and counterpart theory – the belief in real, concrete possible worlds.

#### Logical pluralism[edit]

Many valued logics have been popular since Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz. Recent approaches have led to logical pluralism and dialetheism, advocated by the likes of JC Beall and Graham Priest.

### Epistemology[edit]

Main article: Epistemology

Edmund Gettier helped to revitalize analytic epistemology.

Owing largely to Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?",[45] and so called Gettier problem, epistemology resurged 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 dialogue Theaetetus. These include developing theories of justification to deal with Gettier's examples, or giving alternatives to the justified true belief model.

Kripke in Naming and Necessity and elsewhere argued for the possibility of necessary, a posteriori truths.[44]

Other and related topics of contemporary research include debates between internalism and externalism,[46] basic knowledge, the nature of evidence, the value of knowledge, epistemic luck, virtue epistemology, the role of intuitions in justification, and treating knowledge as a primitive concept.

### Ethics[edit]

Due to the commitments to empiricism and symbolic 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.[47] It was only with the emergence of ordinary language philosophers that ethics started to become an acceptable area of inquiry for analytic philosophers.[47] Philosophers working with the analytic tradition have gradually come to distinguish three major types of moral philosophy.

* Meta-ethics which investigates moral terms and concepts;[48]
* 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.

#### Meta-ethics[edit]

As well as Hume's famous is/ought distinction, twentieth-century meta-ethics has two original strains.

##### Principia Ethica[edit]

G. E. Moore was an ethical non-naturalist.

The first is G.E. Moore's investigation into the nature of ethical terms (e.g., good) in his Principia Ethica (1903), which advances ethical non naturalism and is known for identifying the naturalistic fallacy, a major topic of investigation for analytical philosophers.

##### Emotivism[edit]

The second is in logical positivism and its attitude that unverifiable statements are meaningless, best exemplified in English by A. J. Ayer's Language Truth, And Logic. Although the logical positivist attitude was adopted originally to promote scientific investigation by rejecting grand metaphysical systems, it had the additional effect of making (ethical and aesthetic) value judgments (as well as religious statements and beliefs) meaningless. As a result, they avoided normative ethics and instead began meta-ethical investigations into the nature of moral terms, statements, and judgments.

The logical positivists opined that statements about value—including all ethical and aesthetic judgments—are non-cognitive; that is, they cannot be objectively verified or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted an emotivist 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 the expressivism of Charles Stevenson, and the universal prescriptivism of R.M. Hare, which was based on J. L. Austin's philosophy of speech acts.

##### Critics[edit]

These theories were not without their critics. Philippa Foot defended naturalist moral realism and contributed several essays attacking all these theories. Also, J.O. Urmson's article "On Grading" called the is/ought distinction into question. 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. Contemporary philosophers like Russ Shafer-Landau defend moral realism.

#### Normative ethics[edit]

The first half of the 20th century was marked by skepticism toward and neglect of normative ethics. Related subjects, such as social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of history, became only marginal topics of English-language philosophy during this period. However today, contemporary normative ethics is dominated by three schools: consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology.

##### Utilitarianism[edit]

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.

##### Virtue ethics[edit]

Perhaps the most influential to do this was Elizabeth Anscombe, whose monograph Intention was called by Donald Davidson "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle".[49] A favorite student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the philosophical lexicon, declared the "is-ought" impasse to be unproductive, and sparked a revival of Aristotle's virtue ethical approach. This increased interest in virtue ethics has been dubbed the "aretaic turn" mimicking the linguistic turn, and is exemplified by the work of Anscombe, Foot, who introduced the famous "trolley problem" into the ethical discourse, and Alasdaire Macintyre's After Virtue.

##### Deontology[edit]

John Rawls's 1971 A Theory of Justice restored interest in Kantian ethical philosophy and introduced the term the veil of ignorance.

#### Applied ethics[edit]

A significant feature of analytic philosophy since approximately 1970 has been the emergence of applied 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.[50]

Topics of special interest for applied ethics include environmental issues, animal rights, and the many challenges created by advancing medical science.[51][52][53] In education, applied ethics addressed themes such as punishment in schools, equality of educational opportunity, and education for democracy.[54]

### Political philosophy[edit]

#### Liberalism[edit]

Current analytic political philosophy owes much to John Rawls, who in a series of papers from the 1950s onward (most notably "Two Concepts of Rules" and "Justice as Fairness") and his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, produced a sophisticated defense of a generally liberal egalitarian account of distributive justice. This was followed soon by Rawls's colleague Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defence of free-market libertarianism. Isaiah Berlin also had a lasting influence on both analytic political philosophy and liberalism with his lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty"[citation needed].

During recent decades there have also been several critiques of liberalism, including the feminist critiques of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the communitarian critiques of Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre (although neither of them endorses the term), and the multiculturalist critiques of Amy Gutmann and Charles Taylor. Although not an analytic philosopher, Jürgen Habermas is another prominent—if controversial—author of contemporary analytic political philosophy, whose social theory is a blend of social science, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, and American pragmatism[citation needed].

Consequentialist libertarianism also derives from the analytic tradition [citation needed].

#### Analytical Marxism[edit]

Another development of political philosophy was the emergence of the school of analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply techniques of analytic philosophy and modern social science such as rational choice theory to clarify the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best-known member of this school is G. A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, 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 economist John Roemer, the social scientist Jon Elster, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. The work of these later philosophers have furthered Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, such as rational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical techniques in the interpretation of Marxian theory.

Cohen himself would later engage directly with Rawlsian political philosophy to advance a socialist theory of justice that contrasts with both traditional Marxism and the theories advanced by Rawls and Nozick. In particular, he indicates Marx's principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

#### Communitarianism[edit]

Communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Michael 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 lives and is brought up. 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. Communitarianism has a complex relationship with the analytic tradition, as its major exponents often engage at length with figures generally considered continental, notably G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche.

### Aesthetics[edit]

Main article: Aesthetics

As a result of what seemed like rejections of the traditional aesthetic notions of beauty and sublimity from post-modern thinkers, analytic philosophers were slow to consider art and aesthetic judgment. Susanne Langer[55] and Nelson Goodman[56] addressed these problems in an analytic style during the 1950s and 1960s. Since Goodman, aesthetics as a discipline for analytic philosophers has flourished.[57] Rigorous efforts to pursue analyses of traditional aesthetic concepts were performed by Guy Sircello in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in new analytic theories of love,[58] sublimity,[59] and beauty.[60]

### Philosophy of language[edit]

Main article: Philosophy of language

Given the linguistic turn, it can be hard to separate metaphysics from the philosophy of language in early 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. Indeed, while the debate remains fierce, it is still strongly influenced by those authors from the first half of the century: Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Alfred Tarski, and W.V.O. Quine.

In Saul Kripke's publication Naming and Necessity, Kripke challenges the descriptivist theory with a causal theory of reference.

Another influential philosopher, Pavel Tichý initiated Transparent Intensional Logic, an original theory of the logical analysis of natural 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.

Paul Grice and his maxims and theory of implicature established the discipline of pragmatics.

### Philosophy of mind and cognitive science[edit]

Motivated by the logical positivists' interest in verificationism, logical behaviorism was the most prominent theory of mind of analytic philosophy for the first half of the 20th century.[61] Behaviorists tended to opine either that statements about the mind were equivalent to statements about behavior and dispositions to behave in particular ways or that mental states were directly equivalent to behavior and dispositions to behave. Behaviorism later became much less popular, in favor of type physicalism or functionalism, theories that identified mental states with brain states. During this period, topics of the philosophy of mind were often related strongly to topics of cognitive science such as modularity or innateness. Finally, analytic philosophy has featured a certain number of philosophers who were dualists, and recently forms of property dualism have had a resurgence; the most prominent representative is David Chalmers.[62]

John Searle suggests that the obsession with the philosophy of language during the 20th century has been superseded by an emphasis on the philosophy of mind,[63] in which functionalism is currently the dominant theory. In recent years, a central focus of research in the philosophy of mind has been consciousness. While there is a general consensus for the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness,[64] there are many opinions as to the specifics. The best known theories are Daniel Dennett's heterophenomenology, Fred Dretske and Michael Tye's representationalism, and the higher-order theories of either David M. Rosenthal—who advocates a higher-order thought (HOT) model—or David Armstrong and William Lycan—who advocate a higher-order perception (HOP) model. An alternative higher-order theory, the higher-order global states (HOGS) model, is offered by Robert van Gulick.[65]

### Philosophy of religion[edit]

Alvin Plantinga

In Analytic Philosophy of Religion, James Franklin Harris noted that

> 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.[66]: 3

As with the study of ethics, early analytic philosophy tended to avoid the study of philosophy of religion, largely dismissing (as per the logical positivists) the subject as part of metaphysics and therefore meaningless.[o] The demise of logical positivism renewed interest in philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers like William Alston, John Mackie, Alvin Plantinga, Robert Merrihew Adams, Richard Swinburne, and Antony Flew not only to introduce new problems, but to re-study classical topics such as the nature of miracles, theistic arguments, the problem of evil, (see existence of God) the rationality of belief in God, concepts of the nature of God, and many more.[67]

Plantinga, Mackie and Flew debated the logical validity of the free will defense as a way to solve the problem of evil.[68] Alston, grappling with the consequences of analytic philosophy of language, worked on the nature of religious language. Adams worked on the relationship of faith and morality.[69] Analytic epistemology and metaphysics has formed the basis for some philosophically sophisticated theistic arguments, like those of the reformed epistemologists like Plantinga.

Analytic philosophy of religion has also been preoccupied with Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion.[70] Using first-hand remarks (which was later published in Philosophical Investigations, Culture and Value, and other works), philosophers such as Peter Winch and Norman Malcolm developed what has come to be known as contemplative philosophy, a Wittgensteinian school of thought rooted in the "Swansea tradition", and which includes Wittgensteinians such as Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, and D.Z. Phillips, among others. The name "contemplative philosophy" was first coined by D.Z. Phillips in Philosophy's Cool Place, which rests on an interpretation of a passage from Wittgenstein's Culture and Value.[71] This interpretation was first labeled, "Wittgensteinian Fideism", by Kai Nielsen but those who consider themselves Wittgensteinians in the Swansea tradition have relentlessly and repeatedly rejected this construal as a caricature of Wittgenstein's considered position; this is especially true of D.Z. Phillips.[72] Responding to this interpretation, Kai Nielsen and D.Z. Phillips became two of the most prominent philosophers on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.[73]

### Philosophy of science[edit]

Main article: Philosophy of science

In reaction to what he considered excesses of logical positivism, Karl Popper insisted on the role of falsification in the philosophy of science—although his general method was also part of the analytic tradition.[74] Reacting against both the verificationism of the logical positivists as well as the critiques of the philosopher of science Karl Popper, who had suggested the falsifiability criterion on which to judge the demarcation between science and non-science, discussions of philosophy of science during the last 40 years were dominated by social constructivist and cognitive relativist theories of science. Thomas Samuel Kuhn with his formulation of paradigm shifts and Paul Feyerabend with his epistemological anarchism are significant for these discussions.[75] The philosophy of biology has also undergone considerable growth, particularly due to the considerable debate in recent years over the nature of evolution, particularly natural selection.[76] Daniel Dennett and his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which defends Neo-Darwinism, stand at the foreground of this debate.[77]

### Philosophy of time[edit]

Main article: Philosophy of time

Analytic philosophy of time traces its roots to the British idealist JME McTaggart's work The Unreality of Time. In it, McTaggart distinguishes between the dynamic, A theory of time (past, present, future) and the static, B theory of time (earlier than, simultaneous with, later than). The theory of special relativity has had a profound effect on the philosophy of time.

A. N. Prior invented tense logic.

## See also[edit]

* Analytic phenomenology
* Analytical Thomism
* Logicism
* Philosophical analysis
* Postanalytic philosophy
* Scientism

## Notes[edit]

1. ^ 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.[4]
2. ^ "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."[5]
3. ^ "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."[6]
4. ^ "Most non-analytic philosophers of the twentieth century do not belong to continental philosophy."[7]
5. ^ Quote on the definition: "'Analytic' philosophy today names a style 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."[9]
6. ^ "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."[10]
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."[11]
8. ^ "I think Sluga 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."[12]
9. ^ "The answer to the title question, then, is that analytic philosophy is a tradition held together both by ties of mutual influence and by family resemblances."[13]
10. ^ "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, classical pragmatism, existentialism, or Marxism—feel it necessary to define their position in relation to analytic philosophy."[21]
11. ^ "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."[27]
12. ^ Named in reference to Waismann's Logik, Sprache, Philosophie
13. ^ A survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important philosophical book of the 20th century.[32]
14. ^ Named in reference to Carnap's Meaning and Necessity.
15. ^ A notable exception is the series of Michael B. Forest's 1934–36 Mind articles involving the Christian doctrine of creation and the rise of modern science.

## References[edit]

1. ^ Vienne, J.M. (1997). Philosophie analytique et histoire de la philosophie: actes du colloque (Université de Nantes, 1991). Problèmes et controverses (in French). J. Vrin. p. 140\. ISBN 978-2-7116-1312-0. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
2. ^ Luft, S. (2019). Philosophie lehren: Ein Buch zur philosophischen Hochschuldidaktik (in German). Felix Meiner Verlag. p. 258\. ISBN 978-3-7873-3766-8. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
3. ^ Glock, H.J. (2008). What is Analytic Philosophy?. Cambridge University Press. p. 1\. ISBN 978-0-521-87267-6. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
4. ^ Critchley, Simon (2001). Continental philosophy a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. OCLC 1200924441.
5. ^ A.C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 2
6. ^ L.J. Cohen, The Dialogue of Reason: An Analysis of Analytical Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 5:
7. ^ H.-J. Glock, What Is Analytic Philosophy? (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 86
8. ^ Glock, H.J. (2004). "Was Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher?". Metaphilosophy. 35 (4): 419–444. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00329.x.
9. ^ a b c Brian Leiter (2006) webpage "Analytic" and "Continental" Philosophy
10. ^ Colin McGinn, The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (HarperCollins, 2002), p. xi.
11. ^ See, e.g., Avrum Stroll, Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 5
12. ^ see Stroll (2000), p. 7
13. ^ See Hans-Johann Glock, What Is Analytic Philosophy? (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 205
14. ^ Koopman, Colin. "Bernard Williams on Philosophy's Need for History" (PDF). pages.uoregon.edu. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
15. ^ Hales, Steven D. (2002). Analytic philosophy : classic readings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. pp. 1–10. ISBN 978-0-534-51277-4.
16. ^ Origins of Analytical Philosophy
17. ^ A.P. Martinich, ed. (2001). A companion to analytic philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 1–5. doi:10.1002/9780470998656.ch1. ISBN 978-0-631-21415-1.
18. ^ a b Mautner, Thomas (editor) (2005) The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, entry for "Analytic philosophy", pp. 22–23
19. ^ Soames, Scott (2003). The dawn of analysis (2nd print., 1st papers. print ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. pp. xiii–xvii. ISBN 978-0-691-11573-3.
20. ^ a b c "Analytic Philosophy Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Iep.utm.edu. Archived from the original on 3 July 2009. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
21. ^ 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.
22. ^ Glock, H.J. (2008). What is Analytic Philosophy?. Cambridge University Press. p. 231\. ISBN 978-0-521-87267-6. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
23. ^ Akehurst, Thomas L. (1 March 2009). "Writing history for the ahistorical: Analytic philosophy and its past". History of European Ideas. 35 (1): 116–121. doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2008.09.002. ISSN 0191-6599. S2CID 143566283.
24. ^ Beaney, Michael (20 June 2013). Beaney, Michael (ed.). "The Historiography of Analytic Philosophy". The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-923884-2. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
25. ^ Willard, Dallas (1980). "Husserl on a Logic that Failed". Philosophical Review. 89 (1): 52–53. doi:10.2307/2184863. JSTOR 2184863.
26. ^ Michael Beaney (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 383.
27. ^ Jonkers, Peter (2003). "Perspectives on Twentieth Century Philosophy: A Reply to Tom Rockmore". Ars Disputandi. 3. doi:10.1080/15665399.2003.10819802. ISSN 1566-5399. S2CID 70060684.
28. ^ Russell, Bertrand (1905). "On Denoting". Mind. 14: 473–493. Archived from the original on 31 March 2006.
29. ^ Baillie, James, "Introduction to Bertrand Russell" in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Second Edition (Prentice Hall, 1997), p. 25.
30. ^ "Savants Move to Abandon Metaphysical Philosophy". Baltimore Sun. 31 December 1935.
31. ^ Carnap, R. (1928). The Logical Structure of the World. Felix Meiner Verlag. ISBN 978-0-8126-9523-6. LCCN 66013604.
32. ^ Lackey, Douglas P. (1999). "What Are the Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the Twentieth Century". The Philosophical Forum. 30 (4): 329–346. doi:10.1111/0031-806X.00022. ISSN 1467-9191.
33. ^ Longworth, Guy (2017), "John Langshaw Austin", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 21 July 2020
34. ^ Weatherson, Brian (2016), "David Lewis", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 21 July 2020
35. ^ Jackson, Frank (2016), "Armstrong, David Malet (1926–2014)", Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1 ed.), London: Routledge, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-v035-1, ISBN 978-0-415-25069-6, retrieved 21 July 2020
36. ^ Armstrong, David Malet (1995). Universals and scientific realism. Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 0-521-28033-8. OCLC 174240749.
37. ^ Lewis, David (March 1986). "Against structural universals". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 64 (1): 25–46. doi:10.1080/00048408612342211. ISSN 0004-8402.
38. ^ Hitchcock, Christopher (6 March 2015), "Lewis on Causation", A Companion to David Lewis, Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 295–311, doi:10.1002/9781118398593.ch19, ISBN 978-1-118-39859-3
39. ^ Lewis, David K. (2008). On the plurality of worlds. Blackwell Publ. ISBN 978-0-631-22426-6. OCLC 552327787.
40. ^ Rosen, Gideon (2020), "Abstract Objects", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 21 July 2020
41. ^ Everett, Anthony and Thomas Hofweber (eds.) (2000), Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-Existence.
42. ^ a b Van Inwagen, Peter, and Dean Zimmerman (eds.) (1998), Metaphysics: The Big Questions.
43. ^ S. Yablo and A. Gallois, Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 72, (1998), pp. 229–261, 263–283 first part Archived 12 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
44. ^ a b Zimmerman, Dean W., "Prologue" in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 1 (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. xix.
45. ^ Gettier, Edmund (15 July 2020), "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" (PDF), Arguing About Knowledge, Routledge, pp. 14–15, doi:10.4324/9781003061038-5, ISBN 978-1-003-06103-8, S2CID 243290967
46. ^ 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.
47. ^ a b Schwartz, Stephen P. (2012). A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-27172-8.
48. ^ Kuusela, Oskari (2011). Key Terms in Ethics. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 61\. ISBN 978-1-4411-6610-4.
49. ^ From the cover of the 2000 Harvard University Press edition of Intention.
50. ^ Ikuenobe, Polycarp (2006). Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions. Oxford: Lexington Books. p. 104\. ISBN 978-0-7391-1131-4.
51. ^ Brennan, Andrew and Yeuk-Sze Lo (2002). "Environmental Ethics" §2 Archived 1 August 2013 at the Wayback Machine, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
52. ^ Gruen, Lori (2003). "The Moral Status of Animals," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
53. ^ See Hursthouse, Rosalind (2003). "Virtue Ethics" §3, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Donchin, Anne (2004). "Feminist Bioethics" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
54. ^ Heyting, Frieda; Lenzen, Dieter; White, John (2002). Methods in Philosophy of Education. New York: Routledge. pp. 18. ISBN 978-0-415-24260-8.
55. ^ Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953)
56. ^ 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.
57. ^ Kivy, Peter, "Introduction: Aesthetics Today" in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 4.
58. ^ Guy Sircello, Love and Beauty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
59. ^ 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
60. ^ Guy Sircello, A New Theory of Beauty. Princeton Essays on the Arts, 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
61. ^ Graham, George, "Behaviorism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). [1]
62. ^ Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Dualism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
63. ^ Postrel and Feser, February 2000, Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle at "Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle". February 2000. Archived from the original on 29 September 2008. Retrieved 23 September 2008.
64. ^ Dennett, D. (2001). "Are we explaining consciousness yet?". Cognition. 79 (1–2): 221–237. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00130-X. PMID 11164029. S2CID 2235514.
65. ^ 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 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 October 2008. Retrieved 23 September 2008.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link). 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.
66. ^ Harris, James Franklin (2002). Analytic philosophy of religion. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ISBN 978-1-4020-0530-5. (432 pages) (volume 3 of Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, ISSN 1568-1556)
67. ^ Peterson, Michael et al. (2003). Reason and Religious Belief
68. ^ Mackie, John L. (1982). The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God
69. ^ Adams, Robert M. (1987). The Virtue of Faith And Other Essays in Philosophical Theology
70. ^ Creegan, Charles. (1989). Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard: Religion, Individuality and Philosophical Method
71. ^ Phillips, D.Z. (1999). Philosophy's Cool Place. Cornell University Press. The quote is from Wittgenstein's Culture and Value (2e): "My ideal is a certain coolness. A temple providing a setting for the passions without meddling with them.
72. ^ Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Fideism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
73. ^ Nielsen, Kai and D.Z. Phillips. (2005). Wittgensteinian Fideism?
74. ^ Popper, Karl R. (2002). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-27844-7.
75. ^ Glock 2008, p. 47.
76. ^ Hull, David L. and Ruse, Michael, "Preface" in The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. xix, xx.
77. ^ Lennox, James G., "Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism" in Sakar and Plutynski (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Blackwell Publishing, 2008), p. 89.

## References[edit]

* Aristotle, Metaphysics
* Geach, P., Mental Acts, London 1957
* Kenny, A.J.P., Wittgenstein, London 1973.
* Aaron Preston. "Analytic philosophy". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

## Further reading[edit]

* The London Philosophy Study Guide Archived 23 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein
* Dummett, Michael. The Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
* Hirschberger, Johannes. A Short History of Western Philosophy, ed. Clare Hay. Short History of Western Philosophy, A. ISBN 978-0-7188-3092-2
* Hylton, Peter. Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
* Soames, Scott. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 1, The Dawn of Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
* Passmore, John. A Hundred Years of Philosophy, revised ed. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
* Weitz, Morris, ed. Twentieth Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition. New York: Free Press, 1966.

## External links[edit]

* "Analytic philosophy". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* Analytic philosophy at Curlie

* v
* t
* e

Analytic philosophy

Related articles|

| Areas of focus|

* Metaphysics
* Epistemology
* Language
* Mathematics
* Science

|

Turns|

* Aretaic
* Linguistic

Logic|

* Classical
* Deviant
* Mathematical
* Non-classical
* Paraconsistent
* Philosophical

Theories|

* Anti-realism
* Australian realism
* Causal theory of reference
* Descriptivism
* Emotivism
* Feminism
* Functionalism
* Logical atomism
* Logical positivism
* Marxism
* Neurophilosophy
* Ordinary language
* Pragmatism
* Quietism
* Scientific structuralism
* Sense data
* Analytic theology
* Analytical Thomism

Concepts|

* Analysis (paradox of analysis)
* Analytic–synthetic distinction
* Counterfactual
* Natural kind
* Reflective equilibrium
* Supervenience

| Modality|

* Actualism
* Necessity
* Possibility
* Possible world
* Realism
* Rigid designator

|

Philosophers|

* Noam Chomsky
* William Lane Craig
* Keith Donnellan
* Paul Feyerabend
* Gottlob Frege
* Edmund Gettier
* Jaakko Hintikka
* Giuseppe Peano
* Karl Popper
* Nathan Salmon
* Russ Shafer-Landau
* Ernest Sosa
* Barry Stroud
* Alfred Tarski
* Jan Łukasiewicz
* Michael Walzer
* Nicholas Wolterstorff

| Australian|

* David Malet Armstrong
* David Chalmers
* J. L. Mackie
* Peter Singer
* J. J. C. Smart

|

Cambridge|

* Arif Ahmed
* Charlie Broad
* Casimir Lewy
* Norman Malcolm
* G. E. Moore
* Graham Priest
* Bertrand Russell
* Frank P. Ramsey
* Henry Sidgwick
* Ludwig Wittgenstein

Oxford|

* G. E. M. Anscombe
* J. L. Austin
* Michael Dummett
* Antony Flew
* Philippa Foot
* Peter Geach
* Paul Grice
* R. M. Hare
* Alasdair MacIntyre
* Derek Parfit
* Gilbert Ryle
* John Searle
* P. F. Strawson
* Richard Swinburne
* Charles Taylor
* Bernard Williams
* Timothy Williamson

Logical positivists|

* A. J. Ayer
* Ernest Nagel

| Berlin Circle|

* Carl Gustav Hempel
* Hans Reichenbach

|

Vienna Circle|

* Rudolf Carnap
* Kurt Gödel
* Otto Neurath
* Moritz Schlick

Harvard|

* Roderick Chisholm
* Donald Davidson
* Daniel Dennett
* Nelson Goodman
* Christine Korsgaard
* Thomas Kuhn
* Thomas Nagel
* Robert Nozick
* Hilary Putnam
* W. V. O. Quine
* John Rawls

Notre Dame|

* Robert Audi
* Peter van Inwagen
* Alvin Plantinga

Pittsburgh School|

* Robert Brandom
* Patricia Churchland
* Paul Churchland
* Adolf Grünbaum
* John McDowell
* Ruth Millikan
* Alexander Pruss
* Nicholas Rescher
* Wilfrid Sellars
* Bas van Fraassen

Pragmatism|

* Susan Haack
* Nicholas Rescher
* Morton White

Princeton|

* Alonzo Church
* Jerry Fodor
* David Lewis
* Jaegwon Kim
* Saul Kripke
* Richard Rorty

Quietism|

* James F. Conant
* Alice Crary
* Cora Diamond

Stanford School|

* Nancy Cartwright
* John Dupré
* Peter Galison
* Ian Hacking
* Patrick Suppes

* Category
* Index

* v
* t
* e

Philosophy of language

Index of language articles

Philosophers|

* Confucius
* Gorgias
* Cratylus
* Plato
* Aristotle
* Eubulides
* Diodorus
* Chrysippus
* Zhuangzi
* Xunzi
* Averroes
* Ibn Khaldun
* Hobbes
* Leibniz
* Herder
* von Humboldt
* Mauthner
* Ricœur
* de Saussure
* Frege
* Boas
* Tillich
* Sapir
* Bloomfield
* Bergson
* Vygotsky
* Wittgenstein
* Russell
* Carnap
* Derrida
* Whorf
* Austin
* Chomsky
* Gadamer
* Kripke
* Ayer
* Anscombe
* Hintikka
* Dummett
* Davidson
* Grice
* Ryle
* Strawson
* Quine
* Putnam
* Lewis
* Searle
* Watzlawick

Theories|

* Causal theory of reference
* Contrast theory of meaning
* Contrastivism
* Conventionalism
* Cratylism
* Deconstruction
* Descriptivism
* Direct reference theory
* Dramatism
* Dynamic semantics
* Expressivism
* Inquisitive semantics
* Linguistic determinism
* Mediated reference theory
* Nominalism
* Non-cognitivism
* Phallogocentrism
* Relevance theory
* Semantic externalism
* Semantic holism
* Situation semantics
* Structuralism
* Supposition theory
* Symbiosism
* Theological noncognitivism
* Theory of descriptions (Definite description)
* Theory of language
* Unilalianism
* Verification theory

Concepts|

* Ambiguity
* Cant
* Linguistic relativity
* Language
* Truth-bearer
* Proposition
* Use–mention distinction
* Concept
* Categories
* Set
* Class
* Family resemblance
* Intension
* Logical form
* Metalanguage
* Mental representation
* Modality (natural language)
* Presupposition
* Principle of compositionality
* Property
* Sign
* Sense and reference
* Speech act
* Symbol
* Sentence
* Statement
* more...

Works|

* Cratylus (n.d.)
* Port-Royal Grammar (1660)
* De Arte Combinatoria (1666)
* An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668)
* Alciphron (1732)
* "On Denoting" (1905)
* Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
* Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
* Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951)
* Philosophical Investigations (1953)
* Of Grammatology (1967)
* Naming and Necessity (1980)
* Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982)
* Limited Inc (1988)

Related articles|

* Analytic philosophy
* Philosophy of information
* Philosophical logic
* Linguistics
* Pragmatics
* Rhetoric
* Scholasticism
* School of Names
* Semantics
* Formal semantics
* Semiotics

* Category
* Task Force
* Discussion

* v
* t
* e

Positivism

| Perspectives|

* Antihumanism
* Empiricism
* Rationalism
* Scientism

|

Declinations|

* Legal positivism
* Logical positivism / analytic philosophy
* Positivist school
* Postpositivism
* Sociological positivism
* Machian positivism (empirio-criticism)
* Rankean historical positivism
* Polish positivism
* Russian Machism

Principal concepts|

* Consilience
* Demarcation
* Evidence
* Induction
* Justification
* Pseudoscience
* Critique of metaphysics
* Unity of science
* Verificationism

Antitheses|

* Antipositivism
* Confirmation holism
* Critical theory
* Falsifiability
* Geisteswissenschaft
* Hermeneutics
* Historicism
* Historism
* Human science
* Humanities
* Metaphysics
* Methodological dualism
* Problem of induction
* Reflectivism

Related paradigm shifts
in the history of science|

* Non-Euclidean geometry (1830s)
* Uncertainty principle (1927)

Related topics|

* Behavioralism
* Post-behavioralism
* Critical rationalism
* Criticism of science
* Epistemology
* anarchism
* idealism
* nihilism
* pluralism
* realism
* Holism
* Instrumentalism
* Modernism
* Naturalism in literature
* Nomothetic–idiographic distinction
* Objectivity in science
* Operationalism
* Phenomenalism
* Philosophy of science
* Deductive-nomological model
* Ramsey sentence
* Sense-data theory
* Qualitative research
* Relationship between religion and science
* Sociology
* Social science
* Philosophy
* Structural functionalism
* Structuralism
* Structuration theory

Positivist-related debate

| Method|

* Methodenstreit (1890s)
* Werturteilsstreit (1909–1959)
* Positivismusstreit (1960s)
* Fourth Great Debate in international relations (1980s)
* Science wars (1990s)

|

Contributions|

* The Course in Positive Philosophy (1830)
* A General View of Positivism (1848)
* Critical History of Philosophy (1869)
* Idealism and Positivism (1879–1884)
* The Analysis of Sensations (1886)
* The Logic of Modern Physics (1927)
* Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
* The Two Cultures (1959)
* The Universe in a Nutshell (2001)

Proponents|

* Richard Avenarius
* A. J. Ayer
* Alexander Bogdanov
* Auguste Comte
* Eugen Dühring
* Émile Durkheim
* Ernst Laas
* Ernst Mach
* Berlin Circle
* Vienna Circle

Criticism|

* Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909)
* History and Class Consciousness (1923)
* The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
* The Poverty of Historicism (1936)
* World Hypotheses (1942)
* Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951)
* Truth and Method (1960)
* The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
* Conjectures and Refutations (1963)
* One-Dimensional Man (1964)
* Knowledge and Human Interests (1968)
* The Poverty of Theory (1978)
* The Scientific Image (1980)
* The Rhetoric of Economics (1986)

Critics|

* Theodor W. Adorno
* Gaston Bachelard
* Mario Bunge
* Wilhelm Dilthey
* Paul Feyerabend
* Hans-Georg Gadamer
* Thomas Kuhn
* György Lukács
* Karl Popper
* Willard Van Orman Quine
* Max Weber

Concepts in contention|

* Knowledge
* Objectivity
* Phronesis
* Truth
* Verstehen

Category

* v
* t
* e

Philosophy

Branches

| Branches|

* Aesthetics
* Applied philosophy
* Epistemology
* Ethics
* Logic
* Metaphilosophy
* Metaphysics
* Philosophy of language
* Philosophy of mathematics
* Philosophy of mind
* Philosophy of religion
* Philosophy of science
* Political philosophy
* Practical philosophy
* Social philosophy
* Theoretical philosophy

|

Aesthetics|

* Aesthetic response
* Formalism
* Institutionalism

Epistemology|

* Empiricism
* Fideism
* Naturalism
* Particularism
* Rationalism
* Skepticism
* Solipsism

Ethics|

* Consequentialism
* Deontology
* Virtue

Free will|

* Compatibilism
* Determinism
* Hard
* Incompatibilism
* Hard
* Libertarianism

Metaphysics|

* Atomism
* Dualism
* Idealism
* Monism
* Naturalism
* Realism

Mind|

* Behaviorism
* Eliminativism
* Emergentism
* Epiphenomenalism
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