scholarly journals Analytic Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Evgeny Borisov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Main Research Topic

The paper provides an overview of the most fundamental ideas representing analytic philosophy throughout its history from the beginning of 20th century up to now. The history of analytic philosophy is divided into two stages – the early and the contemporary ones. The main distinguishing features of early analytic philosophy are using mathematical logic as a tool of stating and solving philosophical problems, and critical attitude toward ‘metaphysics’, i.e., traditional and contemporary non-analytic philosophical theories. The genesis of analytic philosophy was closely related to the revolution in logic that led to the rise of mathematical logic, and it is no coincidence that some founders of analytic tradition (first of all Frege, Russell, and Carnap) were also prominent logicians. (But there were also authors and schools within early analytic philosophy whose researches were based on less formal tools such as classical logic and linguistic methods of analysis of language. Ordinary language philosophy is an example of this type of philosophy.) Using the new logic as a philosophical tool led to a huge number of new ideas and generated a new type of philosophical criticism that was implemented in a number of projects of ‘overcoming metaphysics’. These features constituted the methodological and thematic profile of early analytic philosophy. As opposed to the later, contemporary analytic philosophy cannot be characterized by a prevailing method or a set of main research topic. Its characteristic features are rather of historical, institutional, and stylistic nature. In the paper, early analytic philosophy is represented by Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap etc.), and ordinary language philosophy (later Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, and Searle). Contemporary analytic philosophy is represented by Quine, and direct reference theory in philosophy of language (Kripke, Donnellan, Kaplan, and Putnam).

scholarly journals On the Return to Metaphysics in Analytical Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.

Ordinary language philosophy, school of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Work ◽  
Philosophical Doctrine

The label ‘ordinary language philosophy’ was more often used by the enemies than by the alleged practitioners of what it was intended to designate. It was supposed to identify a certain kind of philosophy that flourished, mainly in Britain and therein mainly in Oxford, for twenty years or so, roughly after 1945. Its enemies found it convenient to group the objects of their hostility under a single name, while the practitioners thus aimed at were more conscious of divergences among themselves, and of the actual paucity of shared philosophical doctrine; they might have admitted to being a ‘group’ perhaps, but scarcely a ‘school’. The sharp hostility which this group aroused was of two quite different sorts. On the one hand, among certain (usually older) philosophers and more commonly among the serious-minded public, it was labelled as philistine, subversive, parochial and even deliberately trivial; on the other hand, some philosophers (for instance, Russell, Popper and Ayer), while ready enough to concede the importance in philosophy of language, saw a concern with ordinary language in particular as a silly aberration, or even as a perversion and betrayal of modern work in the subject. How, then, did ‘ordinary language’ come in? It was partly a matter of style. Those taken to belong to the school were consciously hostile to the lofty, loose rhetoric of old-fashioned idealism; also to the ‘deep’ paradoxes and mystery-mongering of their continental contemporaries; but also to any kind of academic jargon and neologism, to technical terms and aspirations to ‘scientific’ professionalism. They preferred to use, not necessarily without wit or elegance, ordinary language. (Here G.E. Moore was an important predecessor.) Besides style, however, there were also relevant doctrines, though less generally shared. Wittgenstein, perhaps the most revered philosopher of the period, went so far as to suggest that philosophical problems in general actually consisted in, or arose from, distortions and misunderstandings of ordinary language, a ‘clear view’ of which would accomplish their dissolution; many agreed that there was some truth in this, though probably not the whole truth. Then it was widely held that ordinary language was inevitably fundamental to all our intellectual endeavours– it must be what one starts from, supplying the familiar background and terms in which technical sophistications have to be introduced and understood; it was therefore not to be neglected or carelessly handled. Again it was urged, notably by J.L. Austin, that our inherited everyday language is, at least in many areas, a long-evolved, complex and subtle instrument, careful scrutiny of which could be expected to be at least a helpful beginning in the pursuit of philosophical clarity. It was probably this modest claim– overstated and even caricatured by its detractors– which was most frequently supposed to be the credo of ordinary language philosophers. It was important that Russell – like, indeed, Wittgenstein when composing his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) – firmly believed, on the contrary, that ordinary language was the mere primitive, confused and confusing surface beneath which theorists were to seek the proper forms of both language and logic.

Ordinary language philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
General Category ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Classical Philosophy ◽  
The Human Condition

Ordinary language philosophy is a method of doing philosophy, rather than a set of doctrines. It is diverse in its methods and attitudes. It belongs to the general category of analytic philosophy, which has as its principal goal the analysis of concepts rather than the construction of a metaphysical system or the articulation of insights about the human condition. The method is to use features of certain words in ordinary or non-philosophical contexts as an aid to doing philosophy. The uses in non-philosophical contexts are taken to be paradigmatic; it is in them that meaning lives and moves and has its being. All ordinary language philosophers agree that classical philosophy suffered from an inadequate methodology that accounts for the lack of progress. But proponents of the method do not agree about whether philosophical problems are solved or dissolved; that is, they do not agree about whether philosophical problems are genuine problems for which there are solutions or whether they are merely pseudo-problems, which can at best be diagnosed.

6. So what is analytic philosophy?

2017 ◽  
pp. 92-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Beaney
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Ideal Language ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Relationship

There are various similarities and differences between the respective approaches to analytic philosophy of Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and Stebbing. But is there anything in common that could be taken to characterize analytic philosophy as a whole? ‘So what is analytic philosophy?’ explains that analytic philosophy is ‘analytic’ in an extra special sense because it made use of modern logic together with all the new techniques that emerged in its wake and the greater understanding of the relationship between logic and language that this generated. It looks at later analytic philosophy—ordinary language philosophy, ideal language philosophy, and scientific philosophy—before considering what is wrong and good about analytic philosophy.

A Path to a New Logic

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
David Corfield
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Type Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Context Dependence ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
Key Issues

This chapter explains how modal homotopy type theory combines ideas from two currents of thought: type theory and category theory. Despite what might appear to be rather different philosophical starting points, there has emerged an intrinsically structuralist language of great interest to computer scientists, mathematicians and physicists. This in itself should be enough to interest philosophers in the language, but further motivation is provided by addressing some of the kinds of objection raised to formalization in philosophy; in particular, those from ordinary language philosophy which emphasize the elasticity and context-dependence of natural language. We see that several of their concerns, such as that the definitional and descriptive uses of ‘is’ are conflated in logic, are addressed by the type theory. The prospect is then presented of an opportunity to use the new language to explore key issues in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language and metaphysics.

scholarly journals “MY TONGUE SWORE BUT MY HEART DID NOT”: VINDICATING ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE PROCUSTEAN BED OF SCIENTISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pérez Chico
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Main Thing

Often vilified, if not outright rejected, ordinary language philosophy has been sustained, from its very beginnings, due to the farne of authors such as Austin and the later Wittgenstein; but not, however, on its own merits. These, w hen recognized, are branded as either constituting a bad philosophy of language, or simply a bad philosophy altogether. Thus, same charitable interpretations have tried to domesticate its methods to make it compatible with a mare orthodox philosophy of language. Very gradually, however, this situation is changing, largely thanks to the influence that Stanley Cavell's philosophy is having on several generations of philosophers. The main thing is to convince ourselves that ordinary language philosophy is not strictly speaking a philosophy of language. It is a philosophy that proceeds from the ordinary and pays attention to the importance that the ordinary has for philosophy. We will, in the course of this article, analyze the criticisms and attempts to domesticate ordinary language philosophy and will anticipate Cavell's defense of the ordinary language philosophy as practiced by Austin and Ryle in Cavell's inheritance of the farmer.

Filozoficzne podstawy Herberta L. A. Harta teorii prawa

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Doliwa
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Linguistic Aspect

This article shows H. L. A. Hart as a leading representative of the analytic orientation in legal philosophy. Hart proved that the methods of analytic philosophy yield generous implications to law, where they may promote new ideas and innovative solutions. The text emphasizes the linguistic aspect of Hart’s works; his achievements in legal theory are discussed in the context of the principles of ordinary language philosophy.

Contemporary Metaphysics

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Hazlett
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

There is no general agreement or consensus about how to define metaphysics. The word itself derives from the title of one of Aristotle’s books, one that deals with decidedly metaphysical issues, but intuitively metaphysical issues are discussed by Aristotle as much in his other works as in the Metaphysics. Contemporary metaphysics ranges over a broad set of questions: questions about what reality is like, at its most fundamental; questions about the nature of human agency and perception; questions about the legitimacy of metaphysics itself. The only way to know what contemporary metaphysics is about is to understand the relevant texts, issues, and figures. Hence this article, which presents important and influential background readings in the various subareas of metaphysics. These “areas” of metaphysics (like the various “areas” of philosophy) are deeply interconnected, to say the least. Indeed the quotes used here indicate doubts about the very idea of distinct “areas.” On this score, the artificiality of the divisions employed here cannot be overemphasized. This article is concerned with contemporary metaphysics in the “analytic” tradition, and as such it ignores some important philosophers. Most importantly, this article does not cover the historical background to contemporary analytic metaphysics, which includes the Aristotelian tradition that still shapes contemporary metaphysical thinking; the Humean empiricism and Kantian idealism to which analytic metaphysicians owe so much; and finally, the “Absolute Idealism” of F. H. Bradley (the negative reaction to which helped spawn “analytic” philosophy as we know it). Nor does it cover early-20th-century analytic philosophy, including logical positivism, or ordinary language philosophy. The aim here is to provide background reading for those concerned with contemporary metaphysics. The texts selected are mostly from the last half of the 20th century, and, for the most part, they are those that have had the most impact on contemporary debates.

Geach's ‘Refutation’ of Austin Revisited

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy

A characteristic move of what is known as ‘ordinary language philosophy’ (OLP), as exemplified by J.L. Austin's discussion of knowledge in ‘Other Minds,’ is to appeal to the ordinary and normal use(s) of some philosophically troublesome word(s), with the professed aim of alleviating this or that philosophical difficulty or dispelling this or that philosophical confusion. This characteristic move has been criticized widely on the grounds that it rests on a conflation of ‘meaning’ and ‘use’; and that criticism has been quite successful in its effect: OLP is widely held nowadays within the mainstream of analytic philosophy to have somehow been refuted or otherwise seriously discredited. However, that the words in question do indeed have something referable to as ‘their meaning,’ which is not only conceptually distinguishable from their ordinary and normal uses, but also theoretically separable from these uses, in a way that renders misguided the ordinary language philosopher's characteristic appeal and validates the traditional concerns OLP set itself out to dispel, has for the most part merely been presupposed and insisted on, as opposed to argued for, by detractors of OLP.

scholarly journals Philosophical and Linguistic Sources of Herbert L. A. Hart’s Theory of Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Doliwa
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Linguistic Aspect

Abstract The paper presents H. L. A. Hart as a leading exponent of the analytic orientation in legal philosophy. Hart showed that the principles and methods of analytic philosophy yield fruitful implications to law, where they may foster fresh ideas and innovative solutions. The text emphasizes the linguistic aspect of Hart’s works; his achievements in legal theory are discussed in the context of the principles of ordinary language philosophy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document