Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to prominence during the 20th Century. Initially defined by a reaction to British Hegelianism, it has redefined itself several times in its hundred-year history, but it is characterised by the following features:

First, the positivist view that there are no specifically philosophical truths and that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. This contrasts with the traditional foundationalism, deriving from Aristotle, that views philosophy as a special sort of science, the highest one, which investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of everything.^[1] As a result, analytic philosophers have usually considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences.^[2] Logical positivism (later referred to as logical empiricism, rational empiricism, or neo-positivism) is a school of philosophy that combines positivism—which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge—with a version of apriorism—the notion that some propositional knowledge can be had without, or prior to, experience. ...

Second, the view that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system) to display its similarity with all other propositions of the same type. Analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language. ^[3] The form or logical form of an argument is the representation of its sentences using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system to display its similarity with all other arguments of the same type. ...

Third, a rejection of sweeping philosophical systems in favour of close attention to detail.^[4] Among some (but by no means all) analytic philosophers, this rejection of "grand theory" has taken the form of a defence of common sense and ordinary language against the pretensions of metaphysicians.^[5]

History

In the early 20th century, the English philosophers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore used close conceptual analysis in a concerted critique of the then-dominant forms of Idealism^[6]. Their approach was reinforced by the movement of continental philosophers into English-speaking countries in the first half of the century^[7]. Analytic philosophy subsequently took various paths, including a rejection of formal analysis in favour of a close examination of natural language ^[8], inquiry into the logical underpinnings of languages ^[9] and renewed interest in the ethical implications of analytic method ^[10]. Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, and mathematician. ... George Edward Moore George Edward Moore, also known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 - October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. ... Idealism is an approach to philosophical enquiry that asserts that everything we experience is of a mental nature. ...

Formalism and natural languages

Part of analytic approach is the clarification of philosophical problems by examining the language used to express them. Two major threads weave through this tradition: formalism and natural language.

The former seeks to understand language, and hence philosophical problems, by making use of formal logic. That is, in one way or another it seeks to formalize the way in which philosophical statements are made. This has led to a number of successes, including Symbolic logic, recognizing the primary importance of sense and reference in the construction of meaning, Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions, Karl Popper's theory of falsificationism and Alfred Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth. Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος logos (the word), is the study of patterns found in reasoning. ... The term statement can have several meanings: In programming, a statement is an instruction to execute something that will not return a value. ... Mathematical logic is a discipline within mathematics, studying formal systems in relation to the way they encode intuitive concepts of proof and computation as part of the foundations of mathematics. ... The distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung (usually but not always translated sense and reference, respectively) was an innovation of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in his 1892 paper Ãœber Sinn und Bedeutung (On Sense and Reference), which is still widely read today. ... Kurt Gödel (IPA: ) (April 28, 1906 Brno, then Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic – January 14, 1978 Princeton, New Jersey) was an Austrian logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödels work has had immense impact upon scientific and philosophical... In mathematical logic, Gödels incompleteness theorems are two celebrated theorems proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, and mathematician. ... A definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of the X where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun that picks out a specific individual or object. ... Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, MA, Ph. ... This page discusses how a theory or assertion is falsifiable (disprovable opp: verifiable), rather than the non-philosophical use of falsification, meaning counterfeiting. ... Alfred Tarski (January 14, 1901, Warsaw Poland – October 26, 1983, Berkeley California) was a logician and mathematician of considerable philosophical importance. ... For other uses, see Truth (disambiguation). ...

The other thread seeks to understand philosophical ideas by a close and careful examination of the natural language used to express them – usually with some emphasis on the importance of common sense in dealing with difficult concepts. The term natural language is used to distinguish languages spoken and signed (by hand signals and facial expressions) by humans for general-purpose communication from constructs such as writing, computer-programming languages or the languages used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

These two threads intertwine, sometimes implacably opposed to each other, sometimes virtually identical. Famously, Wittgenstein started out in the formalism camp, but ended up in the natural language camp.

Formalism

Logical atomism

Analytic philosophy has its origins in Gottlob Frege’s development of predicate logic. This permitted a much wider range of sentences to be parsed into logical form. Bertrand Russell adopted it as his primary philosophical tool; a tool he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word “is” can be parsed in three distinct ways: Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (8 November 1848, Wismar – 26 July 1925, Bad Kleinen, IPA: ) was a German mathematician who became a logician and philosopher. ... ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, and mathematician. ...

• in 'the cat is asleep: the is of predication says that 'x is P': P(x)
• in 'there is a cat”: the is of existence says that there is an x: ∃(x)
• in 'three is half of six': the is of identity says that x is the same as y: x=y

Russell sought to resolve various philosophical issues by applying such clear and clean distinctions, most famously in the case of the Present King of France. A definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of the X where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun that picks out a specific individual or object. ...

The Tractatus

As a young Austrian soldier, Ludwig Wittgenstein expanded and developed Russell's logical atomism into a comprehensive system in a brief book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The world is the existence of certain states of affairs; these states of affairs can be expressed in the language of first-order predicate logic. So a picture of the world can be built up by expressing atomic facts in atomic propositions, and linking them using logical operators. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian-English philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking works to contemporary philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. ... Book cover of the Dover edition of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ogden translation) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length work published by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. ... In logical calculus, logical operators or logical connectors serve to connect statements into more complicated compound statements. ...

One of the central movements within analytic philosophy is linked closely to the following statement from the Tractatus:

5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

This attitude is one of the reasons for the close relationship between philosophy of language and analytic philosophy. Language, on this view is the principal—or perhaps the only—tool of the philosopher. For Wittgenstein, and many other analytic philosophers, philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be used. The hope is that when language is used clearly, philosophical problems are found to dissolve. This view has come to be known as quietism. Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. ... Quietism is a term with multiple meanings and definitions. ...

Wittgenstein thought he had set out the 'final solution' to all philosophical problems, and so went off to become a school teacher. However, he later revisited the inadequacy of logical atomism, and further expanded the philosophy of language by his posthumous book Philosophical Investigations. Book cover of the Blackwell edition of Philosophical Investigations Philosophical Investigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen) is, along with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the two major works by 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. ...

Natural language semantics

Davidson. Oxford in 1970s. Strawson, Dummett, McDowell, Evans. Donald Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher and the Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. ... Professor Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (November 23, 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. ... Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett F.B.A., D. Litt, (born 1925) is a leading British philosopher. ... John Henry McDowell (born 1942) is a contemporary philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. ...

Natural language

Reaction against idealism

G. E. Moore, Common Sense philosophy. This philosophy is a rejection of British Post-Hegel Idealism. George Edward Moore, usually known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 – October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [] (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Idealism is an approach to philosophical enquiry that asserts that everything we experience is of a mental nature. ...

Ordinary language philosophy

Main article: Ordinary language philosophy Ordinary language philosophy is less a philosophical doctrine or school than it is a loose network of approaches to traditional philosophical problems. ...

Oxford School. Associated with such philosophers as Austin, Ryle, Searle, and, as well, the later teachings of Wittgenstein. John Langshaw Austin (March 28, 1911 - February 8, 1960) was a philosopher of language, who developed much of the current theory of speech acts. ... Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), was a philosopher, and a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers influenced by Wittgensteins insights into language, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase the ghost in the machine. He referred to some... Searle is a surname, and may refer to John Rogers Searle (1932– ), American philosopher, famous for work on consciousness Charles Edward Searle, British academic; Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1888-89. ... Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ...

Rather than viewing philosophical problems with respect to logic, ordinary language philosophy sets forth the notion of consideration with respect to the ordinary usage of the linguistic terms germane to such problems. While schools such as logical positivism focus on 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. It may be argued, then, that ordinary language philosophy is of a more sociological grounding, as it essentially focuses on the use of language within social contexts.

Ordinary language philosophy was often used to disperse philosophical problems, by exposing them as results of fundamental misunderstandings regarding the ordinary usage of the pertinent linguistic terms. Indeed, this is apparent in Ryle (who attempted to dispose of "Descartes' myth"), as well as Wittgenstein, among others. For other uses, please see Ghost in the Machine (disambiguation) Ghost in the Machine is the fourth album by The Police, released in 1981 (see 1981 in music). ...

Logical positivism and logical empiricism

Vienna Circle, Carnap, Verificationism. Analytic-synthetic distinction. Rejection of Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics. "Emotivism." Immigration of logicians and scientists from Europe in the 1930s. Philosophy of science. Quine, who attempted to dispose of the supposed Two Dogmas of Empiricism, and especially the analytic-synthetic distinction. Behaviorism. Moritz Schlick around 1930 The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a philosophical association named Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society). ... Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891, Ronsdorf, Germany – September 14, 1970, Santa Monica, California) was an influential philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. ... The analytic-synthetic distinction is a semantic distinction, used primarily in philosophy to distinguish propositions into two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. ... Plato and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome). ... Ethics (from the Ancient Greek ἠθικός (ethikos), meaning theory of living), a major branch of philosophy, is the study of values and customs of a person or group and covers the analysis and employment of concepts such as right, wrong, good, evil, and responsibility. ... The Parthenons facade showing an interpretation of golden rectangles in its proportions. ... Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical statements (such as Killing is wrong) do not assert propositions; that is to say, they do not express factual claims or beliefs and therefore are neither true nor false (they are not truth-apt). ... Philosophy of science studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. ... W. V. Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000) was one of the most influential American philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. ... Quines paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, published 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth century philosophy in the analytic tradition. ... Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behaviour can be studied and explained scientifically without recourse to internal mental states. ...

See the separate article on Logical Positivism for further information. Logical positivism (later referred to as logical empiricism, rational empiricism, or neo-positivism) is a school of philosophy that combines positivism—which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge—with a version of apriorism—the notion that some propositional knowledge can be had without, or prior to, experience. ...

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science

Paul and Patricia Churchland, Dennett. See philosophy of mind or cognitive science for further information. Paul Churchland (born 1942) is a philosopher working at the University of California, San Diego. ... Patricia Smith Churchland (born July 16, 1943) is a Canadian-American philosopher working at the University of California, San Diego since 1984. ... Daniel Clement Dennett (b. ... A Phrenological mapping of the brain. ... Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ...

Ethics in analytic philosophy

As a side-effect of the focus on logic and language in the early years of analytic philosophy, the tradition initially had little to say on the subject of ethics. The attitude was widespread among early analytics that these subjects were unsystematic, and merely expressed personal attitudes about which philosophy could have little or nothing to say. Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, remarks that values cannot be a part of the world, and if they are anything at all they must be beyond or outside the world somehow, and that hence language, which describes the world, can say nothing about them. One interpretation of these remarks found expression in the doctrine of the logical positivists that statements about value--including all ethical and aesthetic judgments--are, like metaphysical claims, literally meaningless and therefore non-cognitive; that is, not able to be either true or false. Social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and various more specialied subjects like philosophy of history thus moved to the fringes of English-language philosophy for some time. Logical positivism (later referred to as logical empiricism) holds that philosophy should aspire to the same sort of rigor as science. ... Value in ethics is related to the theory of value. ... Philosophy of History is an area of philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human history, and speculation as to a possible teleological end to its development. ...

By the 1950s debates had begun to arise over whether--and if so, how--ethical statements really were non-cognitive. Stevenson argued for expressivism, R. M. Hare advocated a view called universal prescriptivism. Phillipa Foot contributed several essays attacking all these positions, and the collapse of logical positivism as a cohesive research programme led to a renewed interest in ethics. // Recovering from World War II and its aftermath, the economic miracle emerged in West Germany and Italy. ... Expressivism is a theory about the use of moral language in the field of Meta-ethics. ... R.M. Hare Richard Mervyn Hare (March 21, 1919 – January 29, 2002) was an English moral philosopher, who held the post of Whites Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. ... A philosophy of modified Kantianism, originated by R. M. Hare, who believes that our moral judgments should be of the form I ought to do X in Y situation, whenever all of the relevant, universal properties of the facts that obtain in any similar situation are the same. ... Philippa Ruth Foot (1920-), née Bosanquet, is a British philosopher, most notable for her works in ethics. ...

Political philosophy

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 and closely argued defence of a liberal welfare state. This was followed in short order by Rawls's colleague Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defence of free-market libertarianism. John Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples. ... A Theory of Justice is a book of political and moral philosophy by John Rawls. ... Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. ... Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. ...

Analytical Marxism

Another interesting development in the area of political philosophy has been the emergence of a school known as Analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply the techniques of analytic philosophy, along with tools of modern social science such as rational choice theory to the elucidation of the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best known member of this school, is Oxford University philosopher G.A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence is generally taken as representing the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen attempted to apply the tools of logical and linguistic analysis to the elucidation and defense of 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. All these people have attempted to build upon Cohen's work by bringing to bear modern social science methods, like rational choice theory, to supplement Cohen's use of analytic philosophical techniques, in the interpretation of Marxian theory. Analytical Marxism refers to a style of thinking about Marxism that was prominent amongst English-speaking philosophers and social scientists during the 1980s. ... Rational choice theory assumes human behavior is guided by instrumental reason. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818, Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883, London) was a German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Gerald Allen Cohen, (born 1941) is the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford. ... John Roemer is an American economist. ... Jon Elster (born 1940) is a Norwegian social and political theorist who has authored works in the philosophy of social science and rational choice theory. ... Erik Olin Wright (b. ...

Communitarianism

Communitarians such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel advance a critique of Liberalism that uses analytic techniques to isolate the key assumptions of Liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and then challenges these assumptions. In particular, Communitarians challenge the Liberal assumption that the individual can be viewed as fully autonomous from the community in which he lives and is brought up. Instead, they push for a conception of the individual that emphasizes the role that the community plays in shaping his or her values, thought processes and opinions. Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (born January 12, 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology. ... Charles Margrave Taylor, CC, BA, MA, Ph. ... Michael Walzer lecturing at the U.S. Naval Academy Michael Walzer (3 March 1935 - ) is a political theorist and writer on society, politics, and ethics currently working as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. ... Michael Sandel (1943-) is a contemporary political philosopher. ...

See also

Category:Analytic philosophers

External links

• Analytic Philosophy; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• European Society for Analytic Philosophy

References

• Aristotle, Metaphysics
• Geach, P., Mental Acts, London 1957
• Kenny, A.J.P., Wittgenstein, London 1973.
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, article Analytic Philosophy.
• Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Footnotes

1. ^ See Aristotle Metaphysics (Book II 993a), Kenny (1973) p. 230.
2. ^ This is an attitude that goes back to Locke, who described his work as that of an "underlabourer" to the achievements of natural scientists such as Newton. In the twentieth century, the most influential advocate of the continuity of philosophy with science was Quine: see, e.g., his papers "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and "Epistemology Naturalized".
3. ^ Wittgenstein, op. cit., 4.111
4. ^ See, e.g., "Philosophical Analysis" (catalogued under "Analysis, Philosophical") in Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Vol. 1 (Macmillan, 1967), esp. sections on "Bertrand Russell" at p97 ff, "G.E. Moore" at p. 100ff, and "Logical Positivism" at p. 102ff.
5. ^ See, e.g., the works of G.E. Moore and J.L. Austin.
6. ^ See for example Moore's A Defence of Common Sense and Russell's critique of the Doctrine of internal relations
7. ^ Prominent amongst these were Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap. Karl Popper might also be included, since despite his rejection of the label his method bears many of the hallmarks of the analytic tradition.
8. ^ The later Wittgenstein was accompanied on this path by many contemporaries, including J. L. Austin
9. ^ Quinn and Donald Davidson
10. ^ Many deserve mention here, including the influence of R. M. Hare and Philippa Foot