Questions tagged [analytic-philosophy]
Analytic philosophy is one of two major branches of philosophy defined by its emphasis on formal logic, philosophy of language and scientism. Prevalent in the Anglo-American world from the early 20th century to the present day, analytic philosophy is the dominant philosophical discourse in academia and many mathematicians and computer scientists find themselves intrigued by it, due to the close relationship it often has with their areas of study.
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Michael Dummett on the indeterminacy thesis
In his work "The Significance of Quine's Indeterminacy Thesis," Michael Dummett explores Quine's philosophy. In the beginning of section 3, he states: "Indeterminacy of translation ...
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Is it possible for the sentence "bachelors are unmarried" to be fallible?
Is it absolutely certain that "bachelors are unmarried"? Are analytic propositions like these more certain than the cogito? Is this one area where philosophers throughout time have agreed ...
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Going against the limits of language
I vaguely remember a sentence of Wittgenstein which was about the duty of philosophy: that is, to go against the limits of the language. This was in his late period of philosophy.
What is the precise ...
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What is the place of early pragmatism in analytic philosophy?
What is the place of early pragmatism (James, Dewey, Peirce) in analytic philosophy?
To break down the question: is early pragmatism considered as part of analytic philosophy; does it have a lot of ...
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How might Western Metaphysicists respond to the puzzle of King Milinda/Nagasena’s Chariot
Example of the puzzle
How might Western Philosophers like Mereologcial Universalists or naturalistic metaphysicians reply to this?
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Resisting a classic Buddhist Argument for Mereological Nihilism
I’ve been getting into mereology and this a classic Buddhist puzzle that he recommended. How can these premises be resisted?
A. If wholes exist, then either wholes are identical with their parts or ...
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Is Continental philosophy a continuation of metaphysics, analytic philosophy a departure from it?
Would it be correct to affirm that what has been called Continental philosophy (existentialism: Kierkeggard, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Sartre; phenomenology: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty; vitalism:...
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Was Wittgenstein a mathematical finitist?
Wittgenstein was a notorious critic of set theory, calling it "laughable nonsense". However, he also wholeheartedly rejected intuitionist logic of Brouwer and Weyl, saying "it is ...
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What was Wittgenstein's real motive for wanting to move to Russia?
Ludwig Wittgenstein was no doubt a fascinating genius who was also very mysterious. He was known for doing outrageous things that no one saw coming, and there is one episode in particular that I find ...
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In which respects Quine was a pragmatist?
Quine is a representative of the analytic philosophy, a naturalist, a materialist, a robust realist, an empiricist, and a behaviourist.
Additionnally, Quine is often regarded as a pragmatist (Godfrey‐...
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What are some journals where the papers employ technical logic and math notation?
Recently, I have been interested in philosophy papers that employ technical logic and/or math notation. I know of analytic philosophy, but I am looking specifically for papers that use technical ...
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How can I optimize the attributes of God?
The Problem
The three traditional attributes of God (in whichever tradition it is) are omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Under the assumption that reasonable discussion of God is possible,...
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Is analytic philsophy the most associated with "armchair" knowledge and is that subject to change?
*By armchair I mean knowledge one can gain by not going out into the world very far. And by my title I get the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that if armchair knowledge was lessened, so too would ...
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Is Analytic Philosophy really just Language Philosophy
In a recent answer, someone posted this quote from Michael Dummet:
What distinguishes analytical philosophy, in its diverse manifestations, from other schools is the belief, first, that a ...
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What does it mean to say, "Philosophy really started in 1884"?
I am looking into my old notes from a lecture I attended on Frege's Grundlagen, where the professor at some point jokingly said that philosophy started in 1884, with the publication of Grundlagen. I ...
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Does mathematics fall within the domain of analytical philosophy? [duplicate]
Summary of the problem: I’m unsure if it is correct to think of mathematics as analytic philosophy in the domain of counting and am posting to gather perspectives.
Details and any research: make what ...
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Non-Kantian answers to the Kantian question of representation
In his book “Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy” Robert Hanna says that the central concern of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is to answer the question of “how can the same judgment be at ...
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Help needed in understanding an excerpt from PI (Section 509)
What if we asked someone, “In what sense are these words a description of what you see?” — and he answers: “I mean this by these words.” (Perhaps he was looking at a landscape.) Why is this answer “I ...
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What decides when a conceptual analysis is 'complete'?
When an analysis of a concept is given like
"A bachelor is an unmarried male." How is it decided if the analysis is correct and complete? Is there any way we can 'check' an analysis?
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Kant's philosophy for analytic philosophers
Can someone explain the role of Kant's philosophy in analytic philosophy?
As an example, is the noumenon/phenomenon-distinction important for analytic philosophers? When we see a green tree, is the ...
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An argument that everything exists
This is similar to my previous question, here: An argument that everything is possible. I have an argument that everything exists. For, that which does not exist is not a thing at all. For example, ...
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Is the split between Continental and Analytical comparable to the split between Empiricism and Rationalism, if so can it be reconciled?
Just as Kant reconciled empiricism and rationalism, is there a project to unify analytical and continental ? Or is Analytical philosophy irreversibly ingrained in Scientism while continental ...
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Is Wittgenstein's proposition "the world is a collection of facts not things" similar to Hegel's claim that objects are not things but forces?
They both seem to suggest that objects are not defined by their discrete appearances but rather by the conceptual framework which allows us to perceive them. In case of Wittgenstein the world is all ...
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Is G.E Moore's notion of goodness widely held and defended by contemporaneous philosophers?
I was wondering whether the idea that goodness cannot be defined and is just intuitively recognisable when observed, still holds significant weight? It seems somewhat similar to Plato's idea of ...
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Book recommendation for introduction to analytic philosophy for math major
I am a second year pure math major at university. I took a class on social theory last semester, and did not enjoy it very much because the texts seemed lean toward obscurantism to the point of ...
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What are the reasons for which an idea can be subjective?
What are the reasons for which an idea can be subjective? The most common reason that is brought up often is that: it is subject of personal opinion, but an idea can be subjective for other reasons ...
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Does a causal nexus imply the law of non contradiction or law of excluded middle?
Suggested to clarify: Do the major scientific, mathematical/analytic theories describing causal theories/"a causal nexus", physical theories, and some monist doctrines necessarily imply or ...
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Wouldn’t analysis still be useful with a naturalized notion of contradiction?
I wonder why analysis receives so much attention when it’s very narrow with how we experience the world. That is its focus on logical and mathematical proofs.
One reason for this focus must be its ...
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Are there contemporary analytic defenders of the view that pattern/meaning is metaphysically fundamental and directly knowable?
Background: Much of philosophy since Kant has taken for granted that our basic experience of reality is structured by our cognitive apparatus, including notably our background conceptual frameworks. ...
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An argument against brute physical facts
I would like to know what anybody thinks of the following argument against brute physical facts, such as the idea that the material universe as a whole is a brute fact.
A physical fact is taken to ...
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Do philosophers in twentieth century tend to ignore the history of philosophy?
as I read the history of western philosophy up to early nineteenth century, I have a feeling that the philosophy is somehow "making progress" over this long period. Not that philosophers ...
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Can a representation be a system?
What's the definition of system? I am wondering if a representation like a graph be considered a system, or a system needs to have some kind of effect on something and not merely represent something. ...
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Term for the dichotomy of blaming a philosophical counter-example on oneself vs. our commonsense
Imagine some philosopher answers a question of the form "What is X?". Then a critic points out that, according to this answer, O is not X, but we clearly consider it to be X. It seems that ...
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Introduction to Formal Metaphysics
As I am very interested in Edward Zalta's research in Axiomatic Metaphysics, I wanted to read up on Formal Metaphysics. Would there be some introductory material that would help?
Thank you in advance ...
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Are most philosophers analytic nowadays?
I know, the expression "analytic philosophy" is not something perfectly clear-cut, nor it is devoid of variations and multiplicity. The same can be said about "continental philosophy&...
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Relationship between early Wittgenstein and late Wittgenstein
I think most books treat his early and late theories as inconsistent theories, in a sense that one can agree on either his early or late theory, but not both. However, I think the two theories are ...
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According to Wittgenstein, why are the laws of logic valid?
According to Wittgenstein's tractatus,
A fact is composed of atomic facts.
An atomic fact corresponds to an elemental proposition. (Picture theory)
A proposition is a series of elemental propositions ...
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Relations and Properties
In predicate calculus there is no distinction between properties and relations---they are both just predicates. A property is a 1-ary predicate, and an n-ary relation is just an n-ary predicate. ...
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How do multiple time dimensions appear to allow the breaking or re-ordering of cause-and-efect in the flow of any one dimension of time?
Multiple time dimensions appear to allow the breaking or re-ordering
of cause-and-effect in the flow of any one dimension of time. This and
conceptual difficulties with multiple physical time ...
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criticisms of mathematical structuralism
A popular, pretty modern trend in the philosophy of mathematics has been to treat mathematical objects as only possessing properties within the context of a mathematical structure. Does anyone know of ...
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What do you call an illogical statement that seems logical because of grammar?
What do you call an illogical statement that seems logical because of grammar? Do you have any example of a philosopher who wrote a grammatical sentence in the hope of constructing an logical argument,...
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What do you call something that neither true or false?
Let's say you say this country thought that this country was evil.
This is neither false or true, because it's not like every people in the country had the same opinion. Maybe it's 70%, but using the ...
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Stephen Yablo's Aboutness and logical subtraction
I was finishing reading Aboutness by Yablo, but there is an intuitive definition that I do not get:
He says on page 148 that:
What is this relation of adding falsity, or being additionally false, or
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What are the different kinds of computation that exist?
What are the different kinds of computation that exist? From what I can see, there are two kinds:
Computation based on non-electric and analog devices: abacuses, human
brain, calculator
Computation ...
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Is it possible to understand an action and its consequences as the same thing? [closed]
I was wondering about the individuation of actions; in particular, it appears to me that we cannot distinguish an action from its consequences.
(1) Peter pulls a trigger
(2) Peter fires a gun
(3) ...
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Is this outline typical of the organization of academic analytic philosophy?
After doing some research I came up with the following classification of analytic philosophy. Do certain branches overlap or worse, are there any inclusions that I have missed?
Axiology
Æsthetics
...
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What are the "Simples" Wittgenstein discusses in Philosophical Investigations?
I first came across this term in §39 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, wherein he writes
[O]ne is tempted to make an objection against what is ordinarily called a name. It can be put ...
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Would Analytic Philosophy benefit from a name change?
The moniker 'Analytic' for the currently predominant academic regimen in philosophy does not seem to convey much about its point and aim. Has there ever been or is there any type of movement or call ...
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What is the 'axiomatic' or epistemological foundation of Analytic philosophy, what is its practice and purpose?
In researching the origin and purpose of the Analytical Tradition in philosophy, all that appeared was that it traces its origin to the 'Tractatus' offshoots following Wittgenstein and Russell, and ...
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Why do many philosophers attach so much importance to laymen intuition?
For instance, when discussing "what is Justice", one of Rawls's key argument for "justice has to be a universal concept" is that we do not talk about anything that is "just ...
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