Analytic philosophy
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Analytic philosophy is a broad movement and style within contemporary Western philosophy, especially anglophone philosophy,<ref name="LeiterWeb"/>Template:Efn focused on: analysis as a philosophical method;Template:Efn clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic, mathematics, and to a lesser degree the natural sciences.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="PenguinDicP22">Mautner, Thomas (editor) (2005) The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, entry for "Analytic philosophy", pp. 22–23</ref>Template:EfnTemplate:EfnTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn It is further characterized by the linguistic turn, or a concern with language and meaning.<ref name=":5">Template:Harvnb</ref> Analytic philosophy has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, modern predicate logic and mathematical logic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The proliferation of analysis in philosophy began around the turn of the 20th century and has been dominant since the latter half of the 20th century.<ref name="Vienne 1997 p. 140">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Luft 2019 p. 258">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:SfnTemplate:Efn 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), the ordinary language philosophers, W. V. O. Quine, and Karl Popper. After the decline of logical positivism, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and others led a revival in metaphysics.
Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy,<ref name="LeiterWeb"/> which was coined as a catch-all term for other methods that were prominent in continental Europe,Template:Efn most notably existentialism, phenomenology, and Hegelianism.Template:EfnTemplate:EfnTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn The distinction has also been drawn between "analytic" being academic or technical philosophy and "continental" being literary philosophy.Template:Efn There is now widespread influence and debate between the analytic and continental traditions; some philosophers see the differences between the two traditions as being based on institutions, relationships, and ideology, rather than anything of significant philosophical substance.<ref name="Rinofner-Kreidl Wiltsche 2016 p.">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Template:Anchor
Emergence in Germany and Austria
Austrian realism
Analytic philosophy was deeply influenced by what is called Austrian realism in the former state of Austria-Hungary, so much so that Michael Dummett has remarked that analytic philosophy is better characterized as Anglo-Austrian rather than the usual Anglo-American.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
Brentano
University of Vienna philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano—in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) and through the subsequent influence of the School of Brentano and its members, such as Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong—gave to analytic philosophy the problem of intentionality or of aboutness.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
For Brentano, all mental events or acts of consciousness have a real, non-mental intentional object, which the thinking is directed at or "about". Intentionality is "the mark of the mental." Intentionality is to be distinguished from intention.
Meinong
Meinong is known for his unique ontology of real nonexistent objects as a solution to the problem of empty names, sometimes known as Meinong's Jungle.<ref>Everett, Anthony and Thomas Hofweber (eds.) (2000), Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-Existence.</ref> According to this view, objects like flying pigs are real and have being, even though they do not exist.<ref>Template:Multiref</ref>
The Graz School followed Meinong. The Polish Lwów–Warsaw school, founded by Kazimierz Twardowski in 1895, grew as an offshoot of the Graz School. It was closely associated with the Warsaw School of Mathematics. Twardowski emphasized "small philosophy" or the detailed, systematic analysis of specific problems.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Efn
Frege
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was a German 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
As a result of his logicist project, Frege developed predicate logic in his book Begriffsschrift (English: Concept-script, 1879), which allowed for a much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancient Aristotelian logic. An example of this is the problem of multiple generality. Frege also unified the two strains of ancient logic: Aristotelian and Stoic.Template:Efn
Number
Neo-Kantianism dominated the late 19th century in German philosophy. 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In contrast to this "psychologism", Frege in The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (Template:Langx, 1893–1903), argued 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
Frege also proved influential in the philosophy of language and analytic philosophy's interest in meaning.<ref name="Speaks">Jeff Speaks, "Frege's theory of reference" (2011)</ref> Michael Dummett traces the linguistic turn to Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic and his context principle.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
Frege's paper "On Sense and Reference" (1892) is seminal, containing Frege's puzzles and providing a mediated reference theory. His paper "The 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.
Emergence in Great Britain
British philosophy in the 19th century had seen a revival of logic started by Richard Whately, in reaction to the anti-logical tradition of British empiricism. The major figure of this period is English mathematician George Boole. Other figures include William Hamilton, Augustus De Morgan, William Stanley Jevons, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, Hugh MacColl, and American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce.<ref>"History of Logic", by Arthur Prior, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1961) Vol. 5 p. 541</ref>
However, British philosophy in the late 19th century was dominated by British idealism, a neo-Hegelian movement, as taught by philosophers such as F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) and T. H. Green (1836–1882).
Russell and Moore
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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 rejection of Hegelianism for being obscure; or the "revolt against idealism"—see for example Moore's "A Defence of Common Sense".Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Russell summed up Moore's influence: Template:Blockquote
An important aspect of Hegelianism and 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 doctrine of internal relations, the opinion that relations between items are internal relations, that is, essential properties of the nature of those items. Russell and Moore in response promulgated logical atomism and the doctrine of external relations—the belief that the world consists of independent facts.<ref>Baillie, James, "Introduction to Bertrand Russell" in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Second Edition (Prentice Hall, 1997), p. 25.</ref>Template:Efn
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.<ref name="PenguinDicP22" /> Logical form would be made clear by syntax.
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).
From about 1910 to 1930,Template:Efn analytic philosophers emphasized creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis, which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their opinion, often made philosophers incorrect.
Russell's Paradox
Russell famously discovered the paradox in Basic Law V 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.<ref>p. 449</ref>
"On Denoting"
During his early career, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, thinking it could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. This was done most famously in his theory of definite descriptions in "On Denoting", published in Mind in 1905.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Russell here argues against Meinongianism. He argues all proper 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
Later, Russell's book written with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), the seminal text of classical logic and of the logicist project, encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest in the development of symbolic logic. It used a notation from Italian logician Giuseppe Peano, and it uses a theory of types to avoid the pitfalls of Russell's paradox. Whitehead developed process metaphysics in Process and Reality.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Early Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein developed a comprehensive system of logical atomism with a picture theory of meaning in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Template:Langx, 1921) sometimes known as simply the Tractatus.Template:Efn
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. The Tractatus introduced philosophers to the term tautology and to the truth table method.
Wittgenstein thought he had solved all the problems of philosophy with the Tractatus. The work further ultimately concludes that all of its propositions are meaningless, illustrated with a ladder one must toss away after climbing up it.
Logical positivism
Template:Multiple imageDuring 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 Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Berlin Circle was led by Hans Reichenbach and included Carl Hempel and mathematician David Hilbert.
Logical positivists used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account of knowledge.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> They adopted the verification principle, according to which every meaningful statement is either analytic or synthetic. 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.
This led the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy. The verification principle rejected statements of metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics as cognitively 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.
Several logical positivists were Jewish, such as Neurath, Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank, Friedrich Waissmann, and Reichenbach. Others, like Carnap, were gentiles but socialists or pacifists. With the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1933, many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled to Britain and the United States, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in anglophone countries.
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.Template:Efn
The logical positivists saw their rejection of metaphysics in some ways as a recapitulation of a quote by David Hume:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.<ref>An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) sect. 12, pt. 3</ref><ref>Logical Positivism by A. J. Ayer (1959). United Kingdom: Free Press. p. 10</ref>
Ordinary language
After World War II, from the late 1940s to the 1950s, analytic philosophy became involved with ordinary-language analysis. This resulted in two main trends.
Later Wittgenstein
One strain of language analysis was Wittgenstein's later philosophy, from the Philosophical Investigations (1953), which differed dramatically from his early work of the Tractatus. Philosophers refer to them like two different philosophers: "early Wittgenstein" and "later Wittgenstein".
The criticisms of Frank P. Ramsey on the "color-exclusion problem," on color and logical form in the Tractatus, led to some of Wittgenstein's first doubts with regard to his early philosophy.<ref>Jacquette, Dale. “Wittgenstein and the Color Incompatibility Problem.” History of Philosophy Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3, 1990, pp. 353–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27743943. Accessed 18 Nov. 2025.</ref><ref>Ometiță, Mihai (2017). Logic and Phenomenology: Wittgenstein / Ramsey / Schlick in Colour-Exclusion. In Marcos Silva, Colours in the Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 127-158.
</ref> Norman Malcolm also famously credits Piero Sraffa for providing Wittgenstein with the conceptual break, by means of a rude gesture on Sraffa's part:<ref name="Malcolm">Template:Cite book</ref>
Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and what it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the fingertips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'
In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein develops a therapeutic approach to philosophy. He introduces the concept of a "language-game" as a form of life. Rather than his prior picture theory of meaning, the later Wittgenstein advocates a theory of meaning as use. Philosophical Investigations also contains the private language argument and the notion of family resemblance.
Oxford philosophy
The other trend was known as "Oxford philosophy", in contrast to earlier analytic Cambridge philosophers (including the early Wittgenstein) who thought philosophers should avoid the deceptive trappings of natural language by constructing ideal languages. Influenced by Moore's common sense and what they perceived as the later Wittgenstein's quietism, the Oxford philosophers 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, which are supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary-language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. The most prominent ordinary-language philosophers during the 1950s were P. F. Strawson, J. L. Austin, and Gilbert Ryle.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Ordinary-language philosophers often sought to resolve philosophical problems by showing them to be the result of misunderstanding ordinary language. Ryle, in The Concept of Mind (1949), criticized Cartesian dualism, arguing in favor of disposing of "Descartes' myth" via recognizing "category errors".
Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism of Russell's theory of descriptions explained in the latter's famous "On Denoting" article. In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson examines our conceptions of basic particulars. Austin, in the posthumously published How to Do Things with Words (1962), emphasized the theory of speech acts and the ability of words to do things (e.g. "I promise") and not just say things. This influenced several fields to undertake what is called a performative turn. In Sense and Sensibilia (1962), Austin criticized sense-data theories.
Spread to other countries
Australia and New Zealand
The school known as Australian realism began when John Anderson accepted the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1927.<ref>Armstrong D M Address on 9 July 2005 John Anderson Remembered Template:Webarchive</ref> David Lewis later became closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
John's elder brother was William Anderson, Professor of Philosophy at Auckland University College from 1921 to his death in 1955, who was described as "the most dominant figure in New Zealand philosophy."<ref>Weblin, Mark "Idealism in Australia and New Zealand" The Northern Line No. 3 May 2007, p 6. Retrieved 17 January 2011</ref> J. N. Findlay was a student of Ernst Mally of the Austrian realists and taught at the University of Otago.
Sweden and Finland
In Sweden, Axel Hägerström broke away from Christopher Jacob Boström's idealism, founding the Uppsala School of Philosophy.<ref>Sandin, Robert T. “The Founding of the Uppsala School.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 23, no. 4, 1962, pp. 496–512. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2708171. Accessed 20 Nov. 2025.</ref>
The Finnish Georg Henrik von Wright succeeded Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1948.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Metaphysics
One difference with respect to early analytic philosophy was the revival of metaphysical theorizing during the second half of the 20th century, and metaphysics remains a fertile topic of research. Although many discussions are continuations of old ones from previous decades and centuries, the debates remain active.<ref name="inwagenetall1998">Van Inwagen, Peter, and Dean Zimmerman (eds.) (1998), Metaphysics: The Big Questions.</ref>
Decline of logical positivism
The rise of metaphysics mirrored the decline of logical positivism, first challenged by the later Wittgenstein.
Sellars
Wilfred Sellars's criticism of the "Myth of the Given", in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956), challenged logical positivism by arguing against sense-data theories. In his "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" (1962), Sellars distinguishes between the "manifest image" and the "scientific image" of the world. Sellars's goal of a synoptic philosophy that unites the everyday and scientific views of reality is the foundation and archetype of what is sometimes called the Pittsburgh School, whose members include Robert Brandom, John McDowell, and John Haugeland.
Quine
Also 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", published in 1951 in The Philosophical Review and republished in Quine's book From A Logical Point of View (1953), a paper "sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy".<ref name=qui>Template:Cite journal Reprinted in his 1953 From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press.</ref><ref>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 Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>Peter Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality, 2003, University of Chicago, Template:ISBN, pages 30–33 (section 2.4 "Problems and Changes")</ref>
From a Logical Point of View also contains Quine's essay "On What There Is" (1948), which elucidates Russell's theory of descriptions and contains Quine's famous dictum of ontological commitment, "To be is to be the value of a variable". He also dubbed the problem of nonexistence Plato's beard.
Quine sought to naturalize philosophy and saw philosophy as continuous with science, but instead of logical positivism advocated a kind of semantic holism and ontological relativity, which explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. In his magnum opus Word and Object (1960), Quine introduces the idea of radical translation, an introduction to his theory of the indeterminacy of translation, and specifically to prove the inscrutability of reference.
Kripke
Important also for the revival of metaphysics was the further development of modal logic, first introduced by pragmatist C. I. Lewis. Saul Kripke provided a semantics for modal logic.
Especially important was Kripke's book Naming and Necessity (1980).Template:Efn According to one author, Naming and Necessity "played a large role in the implicit, but widespread, rejection of the view—so popular among ordinary language philosophers—that philosophy is nothing more than the analysis of language."<ref name=ageofm>Soames, Scott. 2005. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 2: The Age of Meaning. Princeton University Press. Cited in Byrne, Alex and Hall, Ned. 2004. 'Necessary Truths'. Boston Review October/November 2004.</ref>
Kripke is widely regarded as having revived theories of essence and identity as respectable topics of philosophical discussion.<ref name=":1" /> He was influential in arguing that flaws in common theories of descriptions and proper names are indicative of larger misunderstandings of the metaphysics of modality, or of necessity and possibility.<ref name=":1" />
Kripke argued proper names are rigid designators, or designate the same thing in all possible worlds, unlike descriptions. For example, an election may have turned out differently, so the description "winner of the 1968 US presidential election" might have designated Hubert Humphrey instead of Richard Nixon. However, the name "Richard Nixon" designates the man Richard Nixon, regardless of the election results.<ref>p. 40-52</ref>
Kripke further argued that necessity is a metaphysical notion distinct from the epistemic notion of a priori, and that there are necessary truths that are known a posteriori, such as that water is H2O, or gold is atomic number 79.<ref name=":1">Zimmerman, Dean W., "Prologue" in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 1 (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. xix.</ref>
Kripke and Hilary Putnam argued for realism about natural kinds. Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment is used to argue water is a natural kind.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
David Lewis
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American philosopher David Lewis defended a number of elaborate metaphysical theories. In works such as On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) and Counterfactuals (1973) he argued for modal realism and counterpart theoryTemplate:Sndthe belief in real, concrete possible worlds, and argued against any "ersatz" conception of possibility.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref> According to Lewis, "actual" is merely an indexical label we give a world when we are in it.
Lewis also defended what he called Humean supervenience, and a counterfactual theory of causation.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Universals
In response to the problem of universals, Australian David Armstrong defended a kind of moderate realism.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Quine and Lewis defended nominalism.<ref name=":2" />
Mereology
Polish philosopher Stanisław Leśniewski coined the term mereology, which is the formal study of parts and wholes, a subject that arguably goes back to the time of the pre-Socratics.<ref>Cotnoir, A. J., and Varzi, Achille C.. Mereology. United Kingdom, OUP Oxford, 2021. p. 2</ref> David Lewis introduced the term 'gunk'. Peter Van Inwagen believes in mereological nihilism, except for living beings, a view called organicism.
Free will and determinism
Peter van Inwagen's 1983 monograph An Essay on Free WillTemplate:Sfn played an important role in rehabilitating libertarianism with respect to free will, in mainstream analytical philosophy.Template:Sfn In the book, he introduces the consequence argument and the term incompatibilism about free will and determinism, to stand in contrast to compatibilism—the view that free will is compatible with determinism. Charlie Broad had previously made similar arguments.
Personal identity
Since John Locke, philosophers have been concerned with the problem of personal identity. Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (1984) defends a kind of bundle theory, while David Lewis defends perdurantism. Bernard Williams in The Self and the Future (1970) argues that personal identity is bodily identity rather than mental continuity.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Principle of sufficient reason
Since Leibniz philosophers have discussed the principle of sufficient reason or PSR. Van Inwagen criticizes the PSR.Template:Sfn Alexander Pruss defends it.<ref>Pruss, "Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments"</ref>
Philosophy of time
Analytic philosophy of time traces its roots to the British idealist J. M. E. McTaggart's article "The Unreality of Time" (1908). In it, McTaggart distinguishes between the dynamic, A-, or tensed, theory of time (past, present, future), in which time flows; and the static or tenseless B-theory of time (earlier than, simultaneous with, later than).
The theory of special relativity seems to advocate a B-theory of time. David Lewis's perdurantism, or four-dimensionalism, requires a B-theory of time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Arthur Prior, who invented tense logic, advocated the A-theory of time.
Eternalism holds that past, present, and future are equally real. In contrast, presentism holds that only entities in the present exist.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> The moving spotlight theory is a kind of hybrid view where all moments exist, but only one moment is present. Growing block holds that only the past and present exist, but the future does not (yet) exist. Charlie Broad advocated growing block.
Logical pluralism
Many-valued and non-classical logics have been popular since the Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz. Graham Priest is a dialetheist, seeing it as the most natural solution to problems such as the liar paradox. JC Beall, together with Greg Restall, is a pioneer of a widely-discussed version of logical pluralism.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Analytic Idealism
In the 21st century, some philosophers have sought to revive forms of idealism within the analytic tradition. While analytic idealism remains a minority position, one notable example is the work of Bernardo Kastrup.<ref name="Kastrup">Template:Cite web</ref> It seeks to resolve the so-called hard problem of consciousness by taking experience as ontologically fundamental.<ref name="Kastrup"/>
Epistemology
Justification
Gettier
Owing largely to Edmund Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?",<ref>Template:Citation</ref> and the so-called Gettier problem, epistemology has ever since enjoyed a resurgence as a topic of analytic philosophy. Gettier provided counterexamples to the "justified true belief" model of knowledge, found as early as Plato's dialogue Theaetetus. Gettier focuses on examples of epistemic luck.
A large portion of analytic epistemology is intended to resolve the problems that arise from Gettier's examples. These include developing theories of justification to deal with Gettier's examples, or giving alternatives to the justified-true-belief model.
Timothy Williamson argues in Knowledge and Its Limits that knowledge is irreducible.
Theories
Chisholm defended foundationalism. Quine defended coherentism, a "web of belief".<ref>The Web of Belief</ref> Ernest Sosa proposed virtue epistemology.
Internalism and externalism
The debate between internalism and externalism still exists in analytic philosophy.<ref>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.</ref> Alvin Goldman is an externalist known for developing a popular form of externalism called reliabilism. Most externalists reject the KK thesis, which has been disputed since the introduction of the epistemic logic by Jaakko Hintikka in 1962.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref>
Problem of the Criterion
While a problem since antiquity, American philosopher Roderick Chisholm, in his Theory of Knowledge, details the problem of the criterion with two sets of questions:
- What do we know? or What is the extent of our knowledge?
- How do we know? or What is the criterion for deciding whether we have knowledge in any particular case?
An answer to either set of questions will allow us to devise a means of answering the other. Answering the former question-set first is called particularism, whereas answering the latter set first is called methodism. A third solution is skepticism, or doubting there is such a thing as knowledge.
Truth
Frege questioned standard theories of truth, and sometimes advocated a redundancy theory of truth. Frank Ramsey also advocated a redundancy theory. Alfred Tarski put forward a semantic theory of truth.<ref name="Vaught">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="FF">Feferman & Feferman, p. 1</ref>
In Truth-Makers (1984), Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons, and Barry Smith introduced the truth-maker idea as a contribution to the correspondence theory of truth.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> A truth-maker is contrasted with a truth-bearer.
Closure
Epistemic closure is the claim that knowledge is closed under entailment; in other words epistemic closure is a property or the principle that if a subject <math>S</math> knows <math>p</math>, and <math>S</math> knows that <math>p</math> entails <math>q</math>, then <math>S</math> can thereby come to know <math>q</math>.<ref name="stanford">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Most epistemological theories involve a closure principle, and many skeptical arguments assume a closure principle. In Proof of An External World, G. E. Moore uses closure in his famous anti-skeptical "here is one hand" argument. Shortly before his death, Wittgenstein wrote On Certainty in response to Moore.
While the principle of epistemic closure is generally regarded as intuitive,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> philosophers, such as Fred Dretske with relevant alternatives theory and Robert Nozick in Philosophical Explanations, have argued against it.
Induction
In his book Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Nelson Goodman introduced the "new riddle of induction", so-called by analogy with Hume's classical problem of induction. Goodman's famous example was to introduce the predicates grue and bleen. "Grue" applies to all things before a certain time t, just in case they are green, but also just in case they are blue after time t; and "bleen" applies to all things before a certain time t, just in the case they are blue, but also just in case they are green after time t.
Other topics
Other, related topics of research include debates over cases of knowledge, the value of knowledge, the nature of evidence, and the role of intuitions in justification.
Ethics
Early analytic philosophers often thought that inquiry in the ethical domain could not be made rigorous enough to merit any attention.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> It was only with the emergence of ordinary-language philosophers that ethics started to become an acceptable area of inquiry for analytic philosophers.<ref name=":0" /> Philosophers working within the analytic tradition have gradually come to distinguish three major types of moral philosophy.
- Meta-ethics, which investigates moral terms and concepts;<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- 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
As well as Hume's famous is/ought distinction, twentieth-century meta-ethics has two original strains.
Principia Ethica
The first is G. E. Moore's investigation into the nature of ethical terms (e.g., good) in his Principia Ethica (1903), which advances a kind of moral realism called ethical non-naturalism and is known for the open question argument and identifying the naturalistic fallacy, a major topic of investigation for analytical philosophers. According to Moore, "Goodness is a simple, undefinable, non-natural property."
Contemporary philosophers, such as Russ Shafer-Landau in Moral Realism: A Defence, defend ethical non-naturalism.
Emotivism
The second is founded on logical positivism and its attitude that unverifiable statements are 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
As non-cognitivism, the is/ought distinction, and the naturalistic fallacy were questioned, analytic philosophers showed a renewed interest in the traditional questions of moral philosophy.
Philippa Foot defended naturalist moral realism and contributed several essays attacking other theories.Template:Efn Foot introduced the famous "trolley problem" into the ethical discourse.<ref name="Philippa Foot 1978">Philippa Foot, "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect" Template:Webarchive in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) (originally in the Oxford Review, No. 5, 1967).</ref>
Perhaps the most influential critic was Elizabeth Anscombe, whose monograph Intention was called by Donald Davidson "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle".<ref>From the cover of the 2000 Harvard University Press edition of Intention.</ref> A favorite student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" declared the "is-ought" impasse to be unproductive. J.O. Urmson's article "On Grading" also called the is/ought distinction into question.
Australian J. L. Mackie, in Ethics: Inventing Right And Wrong, defended anti-realist error theory. Bernard Williams also influenced ethics by advocating a kind of moral relativism and rejecting all other theories.<ref>Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy</ref>
Normative ethics
The first half of the 20th century was marked by skepticism toward, and neglect of, normative ethics. However, contemporary normative ethics is dominated by three schools: consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology.Template:Efn
Consequentialism, or Utilitarianism
During the early 20th century, utilitarianism was the only non-skeptical type of ethics to remain popular among analytic philosophers. However, as the influence of logical positivism declined mid-century, analytic philosophers had a renewed interest in ethics. Utilitarianism: For and Against was written with Jack Smart arguing for and Bernard Williams arguing against.
Virtue ethics
Anscombe, Foot, and Alasdair Macintyre's After Virtue 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.
Deontology
John Rawls's 1971 A Theory of Justice restored interest in Kantian ethical philosophy.
Applied ethics
Since around 1970, a significant feature of analytic philosophy 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Topics of special interest for applied ethics include environmental ethics, animal rights, and the many challenges created by advancing medical science.<ref>Brennan, Andrew and Yeuk-Sze Lo (2002). "Environmental Ethics" §2 Template:Webarchive, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.</ref><ref>Gruen, Lori (2003). "The Moral Status of Animals," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.</ref><ref>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.</ref> In education, applied ethics addressed themes such as punishment in schools, equality of educational opportunity, and education for democracy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Political philosophy
Liberalism
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Isaiah Berlin had a lasting influence on both analytic political philosophy and liberalism with his lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Berlin defined 'negative liberty' as absence of coercion or interference in private actions. 'Positive liberty' Berlin maintained, could be thought of as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do.
Current analytic political philosophy owes much 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. Rawls introduced the term the veil of ignorance.
This was followed soon by Rawls's colleague Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defense of free-market libertarianism. Consequentialist libertarianism also derives from the analytic tradition Template:Citation needed.
During recent decades there have also been several critics of liberalism, including the feminist critiques by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the multiculturalist critiques by Amy Gutmann and Charles Taylor, and the communitarian critiques by Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre (although neither of them endorses the term).
Analytical Marxism
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 to clarify the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best-known member of this school is G. A. Cohen, whose 1978 book, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, is generally considered to represent the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen used logical and linguistic analysis to clarify and defend Marx's materialist conception of history. Other prominent analytical Marxists include the economist John Roemer, the social scientist Jon Elster, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. The work of these later philosophers has 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.<ref name="Farmelant2009">Template:Cite magazine</ref>
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.
Although not an analytic philosopher, Jürgen Habermas is another influential—if controversial—author in contemporary analytic political philosophy, whose social theory is a blend of social science, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, and American pragmatism.Template:Citation needed
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 main assumptions of liberal individualists, such as Rawls, and then challenges these assumptions. In particular, communitarians challenge the liberal assumption that the individual can be considered as fully autonomous from the community in which he is brought up and lives. Instead, they argue for a conception of the individual that emphasizes the role that the community plays in forming his or her values, thought processes, and opinions. While in the analytic tradition, its major exponents often also engage at length with figures generally considered continental, notably G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Aesthetics
As a result of logical positivism, as well as 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<ref>Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953)</ref> and Nelson Goodman<ref>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.</ref> addressed these problems in an analytic style during the 1950s and 1960s. Since Goodman, aesthetics as a discipline for analytic philosophers has flourished.<ref>Kivy, Peter, "Introduction: Aesthetics Today" in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 4.</ref>
Arthur Danto argued for a "institutional definition of art" in the 1964 essay "The Artworld" in which Danto coined the term "artworld" (as opposed to the existing "art world", though they mean the same), by which he meant cultural context or "an atmosphere of art theory".<ref>Adajian, Thomas. "The Definition of Art", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London, Oct 23, 2007. </ref>
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,<ref>Guy Sircello, Love and Beauty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.</ref> sublimity,<ref>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</ref> and beauty.<ref>Guy Sircello, A New Theory of Beauty. Princeton Essays on the Arts, 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.</ref> In the opinion of Władysław Tatarkiewicz, there are six conditions for the presentation of art: beauty, form, representation, reproduction of reality, artistic expression, and innovation. However, one may not be able to pin down these qualities in a work of art.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
George Dickie was an influential philosopher of art. Dickie's student Noël Carroll is a leading philosopher of art.
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is a topic that has decreased in activity in recent decades. While the debate remains fierce, it is still strongly influenced by earlier authors, e.g. Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Tarski, and Quine. Further, given the linguistic turn, it can be hard to separate the philosophy of language from the rest of analytic philosophy.
Semantics
In his book Naming and Necessity, Kripke challenges the descriptivist theory with a causal theory of reference. According to one author, "In the philosophy of language, Naming and Necessity is among the most important works ever."<ref name=ageofm />
Ruth Barcan Marcus also challenged descriptivism with a direct reference theory. Keith Donnellan also challenged descriptivism.<ref>Keith Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions"</ref>
Externalism
Hilary Putnam used the Twin Earth and brain in a vat thought experiments to argue for semantic externalism, or the view that the meanings of words are not psychological. Donald Davidson uses the thought experiment of Swampman to advocate for semantic externalism.
Skepticism
Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language provides a rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language and, so, calls into question the idea of meaning. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date".<ref>p. 60</ref> The portmanteau "Kripkenstein" has been coined as a term for a fictional person who holds the views expressed by Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein.
Semantic analysis
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.
Pragmatics
Paul Grice and his maxims and theory of implicature established the discipline of pragmatics.
Philosophy of mind and cognitive science
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.<ref>Postrel and Feser, February 2000, Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle at Template:Cite web</ref> Two common notions in analytic philosophy of mind are intentionality, as above, and qualia, a term introduced by C. I. Lewis.
Physicalism
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.<ref>Graham, George, "Behaviorism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). [1]</ref> Behaviorism later became much less popular, in favor of either type physicalism or functionalism. During this period, topics of the philosophy of mind were often related strongly to topics of cognitive science, such as modularity or innateness.
Emergent materialism holds that mental properties emerge as novel properties of complex material systems.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It can be divided into emergence which denies mental causation and emergence which allows for causal effect. A version of the latter type was advocated by Searle, called biological naturalism.
The other main group of materialist views in the philosophy of mind can be labeled non-emergent (or non-emergentist) materialism, and includes philosophical behaviorism, identity theory (reductive materialism), functionalism, and pure physicalism (eliminative materialism).
Behaviorism
Behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner 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.
Hilary Putnam criticized behaviorism by arguing that it confuses the symptoms of mental states with the mental states themselves, positing "super Spartans" who never display signs of pain.<ref>Brains and Behavior, Hilary Putnam</ref>
See also: Template:Slink
Type identity
Type physicalism or type identity theory identified mental states with brain states. Former students of Ryle at the University of Adelaide Jack Smart and Ullin Place argued for type physicalism.<ref>Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry By Mario Bunge p. 129</ref>
Type identity was criticized using multiple realizability.
Functionalism
Functionalism remains the dominant theory, first associated with Sellars. In a 2020 PhilPapers survey, 33% of respondents were accepting or leaning towards it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Computationalism is a kind of functionalism.
Searle's Chinese room argument criticized functionalism and holds that while a computer can understand syntax, it could never understand semantics.
Eliminativism
The view of eliminative materialism is most closely associated with Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes;<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and with Daniel Dennett, who is generally considered an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness (but not about intentionality).
Thomas Nagel's paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" challenged the physicalist account of mind. So did Frank Jackson's knowledge argument, which argues for qualia.
Dualism
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.<ref>Template:Cite SEP</ref> Chalmers has criticized interactionism and shown sympathy with neutral monism. Kripke also makes a notable argument for dualism.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Epiphenomenalism is sometimes classed as a kind of property dualism. It's the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but they do not cause anything else in return.
Panpsychism
Yet another view is panpsychism, or the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. Panpsychism can be contrasted with idealism by still believing in matter.
Theories of perception and consciousness
In recent years, a central focus of research in the philosophy of mind has been consciousness and the philosophy of perception. While there is a general consensus for the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> there are many opinions as to the specifics. The best known theories are Searle's naive realism, Fred Dretske and Michael Tye's representationalism, Daniel Dennett's heterophenomenology, 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.<ref>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 Template:Cite web. 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.</ref>
Philosophy of mathematics
Since the beginning, analytic philosophy has had an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. Kurt Gödel, a student of Hans Hahn of the Vienna Circle, produced his incompleteness theorems showing that Principia Mathematica also failed to reduce arithmetic to logic. Gödel has been ranked as one of the four greatest logicians of all time, along with Aristotle, Frege, and Tarski.<ref name="Restall">Template:Cite web</ref>
Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel established Zermelo Fraenkel Set Theory. Quine developed his own system, dubbed New Foundations.
Physicist Eugene Wigner's seminal paper "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" poses the question of why a formal pursuit like mathematics can have real utility.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> José Benardete argued for the reality of infinity.<ref>Infinity: An Essay In Metaphysics</ref> The Grim Reaper paradox stems from his work.
Akin to the medieval debate on universals, between realists, idealists, and nominalists; the philosophy of mathematics has the debate between logicists or platonists, conceptualists or intuitionists, and formalists.<ref>Quine, On What There Is</ref>
Platonism
Gödel was a platonist who postulated a special kind of mathematical intuition that lets us perceive mathematical objects directly. Quine and Putnam argued for platonism with the indispensability argument. Edward Zalta devised abstract object theory. Crispin Wright, along with Bob Hale, led a Neo-Fregean revival with his work Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects.<ref>Wright, Crispin (1983). Frege's conception of numbers as objects. [Aberdeen]: Aberdeen University Press.</ref>
Critics
Structuralist Paul Benacerraf has two well-known objections to mathematical platonism. One is about identification and the other epistemological.
Predicativism was also developed as an alternative to platonism.
There are also Aristotelians in mathematics, such as Dale Jacquette.
Intuitionism
The intuitionists, led by L. E. J. Brouwer, are a constructivist school of mathematics that argues that mathematics is a cognitive construct rather than a type of objective truth. Brouwer also influenced Wittgenstein's abandonment of the Tractatus.<ref>The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk, p. 250</ref>
Formalism
The formalists, best exemplified by David Hilbert, considered mathematics to be merely the investigation of formal axiom systems. Hartry Field defended mathematical fictionalism.
Philosophy of religion
In Analytic Philosophy of Religion, James Franklin Harris noted that:
As with the study of ethics, early analytic philosophy tended to avoid the study of religion, largely dismissing (as per the logical positivists) the subject as a part of metaphysics and therefore meaningless.Template:Efn The demise of logical positivism led to a renewed interest in the philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers not only to introduce new problems, but to re-study perennial topics such as the existence of God, the rationality of belief in God, concepts of the nature of God, the nature of miracles, the problem of evil, and several others.<ref>Peterson, Michael et al. (2003). Reason and Religious Belief</ref> The Society of Christian Philosophers was established in 1978.
Reformed epistemology
Analytic philosophy formed the basis for some sophisticated Christian arguments, such as those of the reformed epistemologists including Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Plantinga was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2017 and was once described by Time magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His seminal work God and Other Minds (1967) argues that belief in God is a properly basic belief akin to the belief in other minds. Plantinga also developed a modal ontological argument in The Nature of Necessity (1974).
Plantinga, J. L. Mackie, and Antony Flew debated the use of the free will defense as a way to solve the problem of evil.<ref>Mackie, John L. (1982). The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God</ref> Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism contends that there is a problem in asserting both evolution and naturalism. Plantinga further issued a trilogy on epistemology, and especially justification, Warrant: The Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function, and Warranted Christian Belief.
Alston defended divine command theory and applied the analytic philosophy of language to religious language. Robert Merrihew Adams also defended divine command theory, and worked on the relationship between faith and morality.<ref>Adams, Robert M. (1987). The Virtue of Faith And Other Essays in Philosophical Theology</ref> William Lane Craig defends the Kalam cosmological argument in the book of the same name.
Analytic Thomism
Catholic philosophers in the analytic tradition—such as Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Haldane, Eleonore Stump, and others—developed an analytic approach to Thomism.
Orthodox
Orthodox convert Richard Swinburne wrote a trilogy of books, arguing for God, consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason. Swinburne is notable for his belief that God's existence is contingent rather than necessary (it is possible God does not exist), but that nonetheless he does exist as a brute fact.
Wittgenstein and religion
The analytic philosophy of religion has been preoccupied with Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion.<ref>Creegan, Charles. (1989). Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard: Religion, Individuality and Philosophical Method</ref> Wittgenstein fought for the Austrian army in the First World War and came upon a copy of Leo Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief. At that time, he underwent some kind of religious conversion.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Using first-hand remarks (which were 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 school", and which includes Wittgensteinians such as Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, and D. Z. Phillips, among others.
The name "contemplative philosophy" was coined by D. Z. Phillips in Philosophy's Cool Place, which rests on an interpretation of a passage from Wittgenstein's Culture and Value.<ref>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."</ref> This interpretation was first labeled "Wittgensteinian Fideism" by Kai Nielsen, but those who consider themselves members of the Swansea school have relentlessly and repeatedly rejected this construal as a caricature of Wittgenstein's position; this is especially true of Phillips.<ref>Template:Cite SEP</ref> Responding to this interpretation, Nielsen and Phillips became two of the most prominent interpreters of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.<ref>Nielsen, Kai and D.Z. Phillips. (2005). Wittgensteinian Fideism?</ref>
Philosophy of science
Science and the philosophy of science have also had increasingly significant roles in analytic metaphysics. The theory of special relativity has had a profound effect on the philosophy of time, and quantum physics is routinely discussed in the free will debate.<ref name="inwagenetall1998" /> The weight given to scientific evidence is largely due to commitments of philosophers to scientific realism and naturalism. Others will see a commitment to using science in philosophy as scientism.
Ernest Nagel's book The Structure of Science (1961) practically inaugurated the field.
Confirmation theory
Carl Hempel advocated confirmation theory or Bayesian epistemology. He introduced the famous raven's paradox.<ref name="Fitelson">Template:Cite book</ref>
Falsification
In reaction to what he considered excesses of logical positivism, Karl Popper, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, insisted on the role of falsification in the philosophy of science, using it to solve the demarcation problem.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Confirmation holism
The Duhem–Quine thesis, or problem of underdetermination, posits that no scientific hypothesis can be understood in isolation, a viewpoint called confirmation holism.<ref name=qui/>
Constructivism
In reaction to both the logical positivists and Popper, discussions of the philosophy of science during the last 40 years were dominated by social constructivist and cognitive relativist theories of science. Following Quine and Duhem, subsequent theories emphasized theory-ladenness.
Significant for these discussions is Thomas Samuel Kuhn, in the The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, who formulated the idea of paradigm shifts and sparked a historicist "revolt against positivism" known as the "historical turn" in philosophy of science. Paul Feyerabend's book Against Method advocates epistemological anarchism, that there are no universally valid methodological rules for scientific inquiry.Template:Sfn
Biology
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.<ref>Hull, David L. and Ruse, Michael, "Preface" in The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. xix, xx.</ref> Daniel Dennett and his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which defends Neo-Darwinism, stand at the forefront of this debate.<ref>Lennox, James G., "Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism" in Sakar and Plutynski (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology (Blackwell Publishing, 2008), p. 89.</ref> Jerry Fodor criticizes natural selection.
Notes
References
Sources
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- Geach, P., Mental Acts, London 1957
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- Kenny, A.J.P., Wittgenstein, London 1973.
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- Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Further reading
- The London Philosophy Study Guide Template:Webarchive offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein
- Hirschberger, Johannes. A Short History of Western Philosophy, ed. Clare Hay. Short History of Western Philosophy, A. Template:ISBN
- Hylton, Peter. Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Passmore, John. A Hundred Years of Philosophy, revised ed. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
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- Weitz, Morris, ed. Twentieth Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition. New York: Free Press, 1966.
External links
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