A Companion to
Analytic Philosophy
Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
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Blackwell
Companions to
Philosophy
A Companion to
Analytic Philosophy
Edited by
A. P. MARTINICH
and
DAVID SOSA
Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001 First published 2001 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Blackwell Publishers Inc. 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts 02148 USA
Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1JF UK
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to analytic philosophy / edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa. p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-631-21415-1 (hb : alk. paper) 1. Analysis (Philosophy) 2. Philosophy, Modern – 19th century. 3. Philosophy, Modern – 20th century. I. Martinich, Aloysius. II. Sosa, David, 1966– III. Series. B808.5 .C555 2001
146¢.4 – dc21
00-050770
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in 10 on 12.5 pt Photina by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
List of Contributors
viii
1
Introduction
A. P. MARTINICH
123456789
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
MICHAEL DUMMETT
6
21
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
THOMAS BALDWIN
G. E. Moore (1873–1958)
ERNEST SOSA
45
C. D. Broad (1887–1971)
JAMES VAN CLEVE
57
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
P. M. S. HACKER
68
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)
SAHOTRA SARKAR
94
Karl Popper (1892–1994)
W. H. NEWTON-SMITH
110 117
Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976)
AVRUM STROLL
Alfred Tarski (1902–1983), Alonzo Church (1903–1995), and Kurt Gödel (1906–1978)
C. ANTHONY ANDERSON
124 139 148 v
10 Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930)
BRAD ARMENDT
11 Carl G. Hempel (1905–1997)
PHILIP KITCHER
CONTENTS
12 Nelson Goodman (1906–1998)
160 169 175 181 205 218 231 239 254 274 281 296 315 326 334 350 357 361
ISRAEL SCHEFFLER
13 H. L. A. Hart (1907–1992)
SCOTT SHAPIRO
14 Charles Stevenson (1908–1979)
JAMES DREIER
15 W. V. Quine (1908–2000)
PETER HYLTON
16 A. J. Ayer (1910–1989)
T. L. S. SPRIGGE
17 J. L. Austin (1911–1960)
JOHN R. SEARLE
18 Norman Malcolm (1911–1990)
CARL GINET
19 Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989)
JAY F. ROSENBERG
20 H. P. Grice (1913–1988)
STEPHEN NEALE
21 G. H. von Wright (1916– )
FREDERICK STOUTLAND
22 Roderick Chisholm (1916–1999)
RICHARD FOLEY AND DEAN ZIMMERMAN
23 Donald Davidson (1917– )
ERNEST LEPORE
24 G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001)
ANSELM MÜLLER
25 R. M. Hare (1919– )
WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG
26 P. F. Strawson (1919– )
P. F. SNOWDON
27 Philippa Foot (1920– )
GAVIN LAWRENCE
28 Ruth Barcan Marcus (1921– )
MAX CRESSWELL
29 John Rawls (1921– )
NORMAN DANIELS
vi
CONTENTS
30 Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–1996)
371
RICHARD GRANDY
31 Michael Dummett (1925– )
378 393 413 419 428 434 451 466 478 489
ALEXANDER MILLER
32 Hilary Putnam (1926– )
JOHN HEIL
33 David M. Armstong (1926– )
FRANK JACKSON
34 Noam Chomsky (1928– )
PETER LUDLOW
35 Richard Rorty (1931– )
MICHAEL WILLIAMS
36 John R. Searle (1932– )
A. P. MARTINICH
37 Jerry Fodor (1935– )
GEORGES REY
38 Saul Kripke (1940– )
DAVID SOSA
39 David Lewis (1941– )
ROBERT STALNAKER
Index
vii
Contributors
C. Anthony Anderson
Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brad Armendt
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Arizona State University
Thomas Baldwin
Professor of Philosophy, University of Y o rk, England
Max Cresswell
Professor of Philosophy, Victoria University of W e llington, New Zealand
Norman Daniels
Professor of Philosophy and Goldthwaite Professor of Rhetoric, Tufts University
James Dreier
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Brown University
Sir Michael Dummett
Wykeham Professor of Logic Emeritus, University of Oxford
Richard Foley
Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New Y o rk University
Carl Ginet
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Cornell University
Richard Grandy
Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Philosophy, Rice University
P. M. S. Hacker
Fellow of St. John’s College, University of Oxford
John Heil
Professor of Philosophy, Davidson College
Peter Hylton
Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois, Chicago
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
Frank Jackson
Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University
Philip Kitcher
Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
Gavin Lawrence
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles
Ernest LePore
Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University
Peter Ludlow
Professor of Philosophy, State University of New Y o rk, Stony Brook
A. P. Martinich
Roy Allison V a ughan Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Professor of History, University of Texas, Austin
Alexander Miller
Senior Research Fellow, Cardiff University
Anselm Winfried Müller
Professor of Philosophy, University of Trie r , G ermany
Stephen Neale
Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University
W. H. Newton-Smith
Fairfax Fellow, Jowett Fellow, Jowett Lecturer and Tutor in Philosophy, Balliol College, University of Oxford
Georges Rey
Professor of Philosophy, University of Maryland, College Park
Jay F. Rosenberg
Taylor Grandy Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Sahotra Sarkar
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
Israel Scheffler
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Professor Emeritus and Directo r , P hilosophy of Education Research Cente r , G raduate School of Education, Harvard University
John R. Searle
Mills Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
Scott Shapiro
Assistant Professor of Law, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Y e shiva University
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Professor of Philosophy, Dartmouth College
ix
CONTRIBUTORS
P. F. Snowdon
Lecturer in Philosophy and Fellow, Exeter College, University of Oxford
David Sosa
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
Ernest Sosa
Romeo Elton Professor of Natural Theology, Brown University, and Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University
T. L. S. Sprigge
Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh
Robert Stalnaker
Professor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Frederick Stoutland
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, St. Olaf College, and Permanent Visiting Professo r , University of Uppsala
Avrum Stroll
Research Professo r , U niversity of California, San Diego
James van Cleve
Professor of Philosophy, Brown University
Michael Williams
Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University
Dean Zimmerman
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse University
x
Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: A Companion to Analytic Philosophy
Edited by A. P. Martinich, David Sosa
Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
Introduction
A. P. MARTINICH
Though analytic philosophy was practiced by Plato and reinvigorated in the modern era by René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes among others, we are concerned with it only in its twentieth-century forms. As such, it was revived in two centers, Germany and England. In Germany, Gottlob Frege was exploring the foundations of mathematics and logic. His efforts introduced new standards of rigor that made their way into analytic philosophy generally, through the work of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. His discussions of the nature of language and reasoning have also become powerful tools in the hands of later philosophers. Among Frege’s many books and articles, the Grundgesetze, Begriffsschrift, “On Sense and Reference” (“Über Sinn und Bedeutung,” 1892) and “Thoughts” (“Gedanken,” 1918) stand out as especially significant.
During about the same period in England, G. E. Moore led the way in opposing the then-dominant philosophy of British idealism. While “The Nature of Judgment” is an early criticism of a point in F. H. Bradley’s Logic, the locus classicus of British analytic philosophy is likely “The Refutation of Idealism” (1903), a criticism of the formula esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”). A crucial part of that argument is Moore’s claim that the concept of the sensation of yellow contains two parts: the sensation that is unique to each person and the yellowness that can be perceived by many people. Even when idealists conceded that there was some kind of duality here, they insisted on a kind of inseparability.
To use a general name for the kind of analytic philosophy practiced during the first half of the twentieth century, initially in Great Britain and German-speaking countries, and later in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, “conceptual analysis” aims at breaking down complex concepts into their simpler components. Successive analyses performed on complex concepts would yield simpler concepts. According to Moore, the process might lead ultimately to simple concepts, of which no further analysis could be given. The designation “conceptual” was supposed to distinguish the philosophical activity from various analyses applied to nonconceptual objects. Physics was famous in the twentieth century for breaking down atoms into protons, neutrons, and electrons, and these subatomic particles into an array of more exotic components. And analytic chemistry aims at determining chemical compositions. The analogy between philosophy and science inspired the name “logical atomism,” a theory that flourished between
1
A. P. MARTINICH
1920 and 1930. Both Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell maintained that there must be simple, unanalyzable objects at the fundamental level of reality. Wittgenstein thought that the simples existed independently of human experience, Russell that they existed only for as long as one’s attention was fixed on them.
Notwithstanding the analogy between scientific and philosophical analysis, most philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century maintained that philosophy was very different from science. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Wittgenstein wrote: “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word ‘philosophy’ must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.)” (4.111). This conveniently left open which was superior.
But if there is anything constant in analytic philosophy, it is change, and the opposite view of the relation between science and philosophy has dominated the second half of the century. Largely owing to the influence of W. V. Quine, many philosophers have come to believe that philosophy is continuous with science. Yesterday’s heresy is today’s orthodoxy. Whichever view is correct, the division between the philosophical analysis of concepts and the nonphilosophical scientific analysis of nonconceptual objects should perhaps not be taken too strictly. Concepts and hence philosophy would be of no use if they did not make contact with the nonconceptual world. In addition, science uses concepts, many of which may be among the most fundamental of reality. To paraphrase Kant, perceptions without concepts are blind; concepts without perceptions are empty.
Overlapping with the latter period of logical atomism is logical positivism, which may be dated from Moritz Schlick’s founding of the Vienna Circle in 1924. One of its principal doctrines was that science is a unity; and one of its principal projects was to show how to translate all meaningful language into scientific language, in other words, to reduce meaningful nonscientific language to scientific language. This project cannot be successful unless something distinguishes meaningful from nonmeaningful expressions. A. J. Ayer probably devoted more energy and displayed more ingenuity in trying to formulate a criterion of meaningfulness than anyone else. His first effort was presented in Language, Truth and Logic (1936), the book that became the most widely known statement of logical positivism and which introduced that philosophy to the anglophone public. The basic idea is that a sentence is meaningful if and only if it is either analytic (or contradictory) or empirically verifiable. Various objections were raised to this, and to every revision of this criterion. Part of the problem was the status of the criterion itself. Either it would be analytic and hence vacuous, or it would be empirical but then not completely confirmed. Logical positivism had been dead for some time when it was buried by Carl G. Hempel’s “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” (1950) and W. V. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951). Nevertheless, Ayer and others never abandoned the spirit of verifiability.
What had already begun to take the place of logical positivism in the 1940s was ordinary-language philosophy, one strand of which emanated from Cambridge in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, the other from Oxford. One of Wittgenstein’s motivating beliefs was that philosophy creates its own problems, and that means that they are not genuine problems at all. The confusion arises from philosophers’ misuse of ordinary words. They take words out of their ordinary context, the only context in which they have meaning, use them philosophically, and thereby discover anomalies with the