Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy (sometimes analytical philosophy) is a style of philosophy that became dominant in English-speaking countries during the 20th century. In the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia, the great majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves as "analytic" departments.

The term "analytic philosophy" can refer to:

• A philosophical practice characterized by an emphasis on argumentative clarity and precision (often achieved by means of formal logic and analysis of language) and a tendency to use, or refer to, mathematics and the natural sciences.
• The more specific set of developments of early 20th-century philosophy that were the historical antecedents of the current practice: e.g., the work of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, and logical positivists. In this more specific sense, analytic philosophy is identified with specific philosophical traits (many of which are rejected by many contemporary analytic philosophers), such as:
  • The logical-positivist principle that there are not any specifically philosophical facts and that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. This may be contrasted with the traditional foundationalism, which considers philosophy to be a special science (i.e. the discipline of knowledge) that investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of everything. Consequently, many analytic philosophers have considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences. This is an attitude that begins with John Locke, who described his work as that of an "underlabourer" to the achievements of natural scientists such as Newton. During the twentieth century, the most influential advocate of the continuity of philosophy with science was Willard Van Orman Quine.
  • The principle that the logical clarification of thoughts can be achieved only by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system), to reduce it to simpler components if necessary, and to display its similarity with all other propositions of the same type. However, analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language.
  • The neglect of generalized philosophical systems in favour of more restricted inquiries stated rigorously, or ordinary language.

According to a characteristic paragraph by Russell:

Modern analytical empiricism [...] differs from that of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume by its incorporation of mathematics and its development of a powerful logical technique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy. It has the advantage, in comparison with the philosophies of the system-builders, of being able to tackle its problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one stroke a block theory of the whole universe. Its methods, in this respect, resemble those of science. I have no doubt that, in so far as philosophical knowledge is possible, it is by such methods that it must be sought; I have also no doubt that, by these methods, many ancient problems are completely soluble.

Analytic philosophy is often understood in contrast to other philosophical traditions, most notably continental philosophies such as existentialism and phenomenology, and also Thomism, Indian philosophy, and Marxism.

History

Late 19th-century English philosophy was dominated by British idealism, as taught by philosophers like F. H. Bradley and Thomas Hill Green. It was with reference to this intellectual basis that the initiators of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, articulated early analytic philosophy.

Since its beginning, a basic principle of analytic philosophy has been conceptual clarity, in the name of which Moore and Russell rejected Hegelianism, which they accused of obscurity. Inspired by developments of modern logic, the early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions. An important aspect of British idealism was logical holism—- the opinion that the aspects of the world cannot be known wholly without also knowing the whole world. This is closely related to the opinion that relations between items are actually internal relations, that is, properties internal to the nature of those items. Russell, along with Wittgenstein, in response promulgated logical atomism and the doctrine of external relations—- the belief that the world consists of independent facts.

Russell, during his early career, along with his collaborator Alfred North Whitehead, was much influenced by Gottlob Frege, who developed predicate logic, which allowed a much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancient Aristotelian logic. Frege was also an influential philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast to Husserl's 1891 book Philosophie der Arithmetik, which attempted to show that the concept of the cardinal number derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them, Frege sought to show that mathematics and logic have their own validity, independent of the judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians (which were the basis of arithmetic according to the "psychologism" of Husserl's Philosophie). Frege further developed his philosophy of logic and mathematics in The Foundations of Arithmetic and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic where he provided an alternative to psychologistic accounts of the concept of number.

Like Frege, Russell attempted to show that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). Later, his book written with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910–13), encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest with the development of symbolic logic. Additionally, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method Russell thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word "is" has three distinct meanings which can be parsed in predicate logic as the following:

• 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).

Russell sought to resolve various philosophical problems by applying such logical distinctions, most famously in his analysis of definite descriptions in "On Denoting."

Ideal language analysis

Main article: Linguistic philosophy

From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasized creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis, which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their opinion, often made philosophy invalid. This philosophical trend can be termed "ideal-language analysis" or "formalism". During this phase, Russell and Wittgenstein sought to understand language, and hence philosophical problems, by using formal logic to formalize the way in which philosophical statements are made. Wittgenstein developed a comprehensive system of logical atomism in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He thereby argued that the universe is the totality of actual states of affairs and that these states of affairs can be expressed by the language of first-order predicate logic. Thus a picture of the universe can be construed by means of expressing atomic facts in the form of atomic propositions, and linking them using logical operators.

Logical positivism

Main article: Logical positivism

During the late 1920s, '30s, and '40s, Russell and Wittgenstein's formalism was developed by a group of philosophers of the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle, into a doctrine known as logical positivism (or logical empiricism). Logical positivism used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account of knowledge. Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, along with other Vienna Circle members, claimed that 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. The claims of ethics, aesthetics and theology were, accordingly, pseudo-statements, neither true nor false, simply meaningless. Karl Popper's insistence upon the role of falsification for the philosophy of science was a reaction to what he considered the excesses of the logical positivists—although his general method was essentially part of the analytic tradition. With the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled to Britain and America, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in the Anglophone countries.

Logical positivists typically considered philosophy as having a very limited function. For them, philosophy concerned the clarification of thoughts, rather than having a distinct subject matter of its own. The positivists adopted the verification principle, according to which every meaningful statement is either analytic or is capable of being verified by experience. This caused the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy, especially those of metaphysics or ontology, as meaningless.

Ordinary-language analysis

Main article: Ordinary language philosophy

After World War II, during the late 1940s and 1950s, analytic philosophy became involved with ordinary-language analysis. This fact resulted in two main trends. One continued Wittgenstein's later philosophy, which differed dramatically from his early work of the Tractatus. The other, known as "Oxford philosophy", involved J. L. Austin. In contrast to earlier analytic philosophers (including the early Wittgenstein) who thought philosophers should avoid the deceptive trappings of natural language by constructing ideal languages, ordinary language philosophers claimed that ordinary language already represented a large number of subtle distinctions that had been unrecognized by the formulation of traditional philosophical theories or problems. While schools such as logical positivism emphasize logical terms, supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary language philosophy emphasizes the use of language by ordinary people. The best-known ordinary-language philosophers during the 1950s were Austin and Gilbert Ryle.

Ordinary-language philosophy often sought to dissolve philosophical problems by showing them to be the result of misunderstanding ordinary language. See for example Ryle (who attempted to dispose of "Descartes' myth") and Wittgenstein, among others.

Contemporary analytic philosophy

Although contemporary philosophers who self-identify as "analytic" have widely divergent interests, assumptions, and methods—- and have often rejected the fundamental premises that defined analytic philosophy before 1960—- analytic philosophy in its contemporary state is usually considered to be defined by a particular style characterized by precision and thoroughness about a specific topic, and resistance to "imprecise or cavalier discussions of broad topics".

During the 1950s, logical positivism was challenged influentially by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, Quine in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", and Sellars in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. After 1960, Anglophone philosophy began to incorporate a wider range of interests, opinions, and methods. Still, many philosophers in Britain and America still consider themselves to be "analytic philosophers". They have done so largely by expanding the notion of "analytic philosophy" from the specific programs that dominated Anglophone philosophy before 1960 to a much more general notion of an "analytic" style. This interpretation of the history is far from universally accepted, and its opponents would say that it grossly downplays the role of Wittgenstein during the 1960s and 1970s.

Many philosophers and historians have attempted to define or describe analytic philosophy. Those definitions often include an emphasis on conceptual analysis: A.P. Martinich draws an analogy between analytic philosophy's interest in conceptual analysis and analytic chemistry, which "aims at determining chemical compositions." Steven D. Hales described analytic philosophy as one of three types of philosophical method practiced in the West: "[i]n roughly reverse order by number of proponents, they are phenomenology, ideological philosophy, and analytic philosophy".

Scott Soames agrees that clarity is important: analytic philosophy, he says, has "an implicit commitment—albeit faltering and imperfect—to the ideals of clarity, rigor and argumentation" and it "aims at truth and knowledge, as opposed to moral or spiritual improvement [...] the goal in analytic philosophy is to discover what is true, not to provide a useful recipe for living one's life". Soames also states that analytic philosophy is characterised by "a more piecemeal approach. There is, I think, a widespread presumption within the tradition that it is often possible to make philosophical progress by intensively investigating a small, circumscribed range of philosophical issues while holding broader, systematic questions in abeyance".

A few of the most important and active topics and subtopics of analytic philosophy are summarized by the following sections.

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science

Main article: Philosophy of mind

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 twentieth century. Behaviorists 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. Behaviorism later became much less popular, in favor of type physicalism or functionalism, theories that identified mental states with brain states. During this period, topics of the philosophy of mind were often related strongly to topics of cognitive science such as modularity or innateness. Finally, analytic philosophy has featured a certain number of philosophers who were dualists, and recently forms of property dualism have had a resurgence, with David Chalmers as the most prominent representative.

John Searle suggests that the obsession with the philosophy of language of the last century has been superseded by an emphasis on the philosophy of mind, in which functionalism is currently the dominant theory. In recent years, a central focus for research in the philosophy of mind has been consciousness. And while there is a general consensus for the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness, there are many opinions as to the specifics. The best known theories are Daniel Dennett's heterophenomenology, Fred Dretske and Michael Tye's representationalism, 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.

Ethics in analytic philosophy

Main article: Ethics

Philosophers working with the analytic tradition have gradually come to distinguish three major types of moral philosophy.

• Meta-ethics the function of which is investigation of moral terms and concepts.
• Normative ethics the function of which is examination and production of normative ethical judgments.
• Applied ethics the function of which is investigation of how existing normative principles should be applied to difficult or borderline cases, often cases created by new technology or new scientific knowledge.

Normative ethics

The first half of the twentieth century was marked by skepticism toward, and neglect of, normative ethics. Related subjects, such as social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of history, became only marginal topics of English-language philosophy during this period.

During this time, utilitarianism was the only non-skeptical type of ethics to remain popular. However, as the influence of logical positivism began to decrease mid-century, contemporary analytic philosophers began to have a renewed interest in ethics. G. E. M. Anscombe's 1958 Modern Moral Philosophy sparked a revival of Aristotle's virtue ethical approach and John Rawls's 1971 A Theory of Justice restored interest in Kantian ethical philosophy. At present, contemporary normative ethics is dominated by three schools: utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and deontology.

Meta-ethics

Twentieth-century meta-ethics has two origins. The first is G. E. Moore's investigation into the nature of ethical terms (e.g. good) in his Principia Ethica (1903), which identified the naturalistic fallacy. Along with Hume's famous is/ought distinction, the naturalistic fallacy was a major topic of investigation for analytical philosophers.

The second is in logical positivism and its attitude that statements which are unverifiable are meaningless. Although that attitude was adopted originally as a means to promote scientific investigation by rejecting grand metaphysical systems, it had the side effect of making (ethical and aesthetic) value judgments (as well as religious statements and beliefs) meaningless. But since value judgments are of major importance in human life, it became incumbent on logical positivism to develop an explanation of the nature and meaning of value judgements. As a result, analytic philosophers 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 can not be objectively verified or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted an emotivist theory, which was that value judgments expressed the attitude of the speaker. Saying, "Killing is wrong", they thought, was equivalent to saying, "Boo to murder", or saying the word "murder" with a particular tone of disapproval.

While non-cognitivism was generally accepted by analytic philosophers, emotivism had many deficiencies, and 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.

These theories were not without their critics. Phillipa Foot contributed several essays attacking all these theories. J. O. Urmson's article "On Grading" called the is/ought distinction into question.

As non-cognitivism, the is/ought distinction, and the naturalistic fallacy began to be called into question, analytic philosophers began to show a renewed interest in the traditional questions of moral philosophy. Perhaps most influential in this regard was Elizabeth Anscombe, whose monograph Intention was called by Donald Davidson "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle", and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of moral psychology. A favorite student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, her 1958 article "Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term "consequentialism" into the philosophical lexicon, declared the "is-ought" impasse to be unproductive, and resulted in a revival of virtue ethics.

Applied ethics

A significant feature of analytic philosophy since approximately 1970 has been the emergence of applied ethics—- an interest in the application of moral principles to specific practical issues.

Topics of special interest for applied ethics include environmental issues, animal rights, and the many challenges created by advancing medical science.

Analytic philosophy of religion

Main article: Philosophy of religion

In Analytic Philosophy of Religion, Harris noted that

analytic philosophy has been a very heterogeneous 'movement'.... some forms of analytic philosophy have proven very sympathetic to the philosophy of religion and have actually provided a philosophical mechanism for responding to other more radical and hostile forms of analytic philosophy.

As with the study of ethics, early analytic philosophy tended to avoid the study of philosophy of religion, largely dismissing (as per the logical positivists) the subject as part of metaphysics and therefore meaningless. The demise of logical positivism renewed interest in philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers like William Alston, John Mackie, Alvin Plantinga, Robert Merrihew Adams, Richard Swinburne, and Antony Flew not only to introduce new problems, but to re-study classical topics such as the nature of miracles, theistic arguments, the problem of evil, (see existence of God) the rationality of belief in God, concepts of the nature of God, and many more.

Plantinga, Mackie and Flew debated the logical validity of the free will defense as a way to solve the problem of evil. Alston, grappling with the consequences of analytic philosophy of language, worked on the nature of religious language. Adams worked on the relationship of faith and morality. Analytic epistemology and metaphysics has formed the basis for a number of philosophically-sophisticated theistic arguments, like those of the reformed epistemologists like Plantinga.

Analytic philosophy of religion has also been preoccupied with Wittgenstein, as well as his interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion. Using first-hand remarks (which was 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 tradition," and which includes Wittgensteinians such as Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, and D. Z. Phillips, among others. The name "contemplative philosophy" was first coined by D. Z. Phillips in Philosophy's Cool Place, which rests on an interpretation of a passage from Wittgenstein's "Culture and Value." This interpretation was first labeled, "Wittgensteinian Fideism," by Kai Nielsen but those who consider themselves Wittgensteinians in the Swansea tradition have relentlessly and repeatedly rejected this construal as a caricature of Wittgenstein's considered position; this is especially true of D. Z. Phillips. Responding to this interpretation, Kai Nielsen and D. Z. Phillips became two of the most prominent philosophers on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.

Political philosophy

Liberalism

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 defence of a generally liberal egalitarian account of distributive justice. This was followed soon by Rawls's colleague Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a defence of free-market libertarianism. Isaiah Berlin also had a lasting influence on both analytic political philosophy and Liberalism with his lecture the Two Concepts of Liberty.

During recent decades there have also been several critiques of liberalism, including the feminist critiques of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the communitarian critiques of Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre (though it should be noted that neither one endorses the term), and the multiculturalist critiques of Amy Gutmann and Charles Taylor. Although not an analytic philosopher, Jürgen Habermas is another important—- if controversial—- author of contemporary analytic political philosophy, whose social theory is a blend of social science, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, and American pragmatism.

Consequentialist libertarianism also derives from the analytic tradition.

Analytical Marxism

Another development of political philosophy has been the emergence of a school known as Analytical Marxism. Members of this school seek to apply the techniques of analytic philosophy, along with techniques of modern social science such as rational choice theory to the elucidation of the theories of Karl Marx and his successors. The best-known member of this school is G. A. Cohen, whose 1978 work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, is generally considered as representing the genesis of this school. In that book, Cohen applied the tools of logical and linguistic analysis to the elucidation and defense of Marx's materialist conception of history. Other prominent Analytical Marxists include the economist John Roemer, the social scientist Jon Elster, and the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. The work of these later philosophers have 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.

Cohen himself would later engage directly with Rawlsian political philosophy to advance a socialist theory of justice that stands in contrast to 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.

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 lives and is brought up. 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.

Analytic metaphysics

Main article: Metaphysics

One striking difference with respect to early analytic philosophy was the revival of metaphysical theorizing during the second half of the twentieth century. Philosophers such as David Kellogg Lewis and David Armstrong developed elaborate theories on a range of topics such as universals, causation, possibility and necessity, and abstract objects.

Among the developments that resulted in the revival of metaphysical theorizing were Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction, which was generally considered to weaken Carnap's distinction between existence questions internal to a framework and those external to it. Important also for the revival of metaphysics was the further development of modal logic, including the work of Saul Kripke, who argued in Naming and Necessity and elsewhere for the existence of essences and the possibility of necessary, a posteriori truths.

Metaphysics remains a fertile topic of research, having recovered from the attacks of A.J. Ayer and the logical positivists. And though many discussions are continuations of old ones, inherited from previous decades and centuries, the debate remains active. The philosophy of fiction, the problem of empty names, and the debate over existence's status as a property have all become major concerns, while perennial issues such as free will, possible worlds, and the philosophy of time have been revived.

Science has also had an increasingly significant role in 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. The weight given to scientific evidence is largely due to widespread commitments among philosophers to scientific realism and naturalism.

Philosophy of language

Main article: Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language is another topic that has decreased during the last four decades, as evidenced by the fact that few major authors of contemporary philosophy treat it as a primary research topic. Indeed, while the debate remains fierce, it is still strongly influenced by those authors from the first half of the century: Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Alfred Tarski, and W.V.O. Quine.

In Kripke's publication Naming and Necessity, he argued influentially that flaws in common theories of proper names are indicative of larger misunderstandings of the metaphysics of necessity and possibility. By wedding the techniques of modal logic to a causal theory of reference, Kripke was widely regarded as reviving theories of essence and identity as respectable topics of philosophical discussion.

Another influential philosopher, Pavel Tichý intitiated 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.

Philosophy of science

Main article: Philosophy of science

Reacting against both the verificationism of the logical positivists as well as the critiques of the philosopher of science Karl Popper, who had suggested the falsifiability criterion on which to judge the demarcation between science and non-science, discussions of philosophy of science during the last forty years were dominated by social constructivist and cognitive relativist theories of science. Thomas Samuel Kuhn with his formulation of paradigm shifts and Paul Feyerabend with his epistemological anarchism are significant for these discussions. 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. Daniel Dennett and his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which defends Neo-Darwinism, stand at the foreground of this debate.

Epistemology

Main article: Epistemology

Owing largely to Gettier's 1963 paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", epistemology resurged as a topic of analytic philosophy during the last 50 years. A large portion of current epistemological research is intended to resolve the problems that Gettier's examples presented to the traditional justified true belief model of knowledge, including developing theories of justification in order to deal with Gettier's examples, or giving alternatives to the justified true belief model. Other and related topics of contemporary research include debates between internalism and externalism, basic knowledge, the nature of evidence, the value of knowledge, epistemic luck, virtue epistemology, the role of intuitions in justification, and treating knowledge as a primitive concept.

Aesthetics

Main article: Aesthetics

As a result of attacks on the traditional aesthetic notions of beauty and sublimity from post-modern thinkers, analytic philosophers were slow to consider art and aesthetic judgment. Susanne Langer and Nelson Goodman addressed these problems in an analytic style during the 1950s and 60s. Since Goodman, aesthetics as a discipline for analytic philosophers has flourished. Rigorous efforts to pursue analyses of traditional aesthetic concepts were performed by Guy Sircello during the 1970s and 80s, resulting in new analytic theories of love, sublimity, and beauty.

Topics of analytic philosophy

Coherentism For epistemology, the idea has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief. As a theory of knowledge, coherentism can be roughly stated as follows: "Someone's belief is true if and only if it is coherent with all or most of his or her other beliefs." As a theory of justification, coherentism can be roughly stated: "Someone's belief is justified if and only if it is coherent with all or most of his or her other beliefs."

Incompatibilism For metaphysics, it is the idea that free will (and therefore moral responsibility) and determinism are logically incompatible categories. This could include believing in determinism and therefore that free will is an illusion (Hard Determinism) or that free will exists and therefore determinism is false (Libertarianism).

Contextualism For epistemology, contextualism is the treatment of the word 'knows' as context-sensitive. Context-sensitive expressions are ones that "express different propositions relative to different contexts of use."

Deflationism For epistemology, the idea that assertions that predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a property called truth to such a statement. However, there are many competing deflationist theories: redundancy theory, performative theory, semantic theory, disquotationalism, prosententialism, and minimalism.

Direct realism For epistemology, the idea that the world is pretty much as common sense would have it. Furthermore, when we look at and touch things we see and feel those things directly, and so perceive them as they really are. In contrast, indirect or representative realism claims that we are directly aware only of internal representations of the external world. Direct realism is also known by the names, naïve realism or common sense realism.

Epiphenomenalism For the philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism is an idea according to which some or all mental states are mere epiphenomena (side-effects or by-products) of physical states of the world.

Externalism Contrasted with internalism, externalism names several distinct views across several branches of philosophy. For example, in moral philosophy a motivational externalist claims that there is no necessary connection between moral judgments and moral motives. In epistemology, a justification externalist claims that there are factors other than those which are internal to the believer which can affect the justificatory status of a belief. In philosophy of mind, externalism is the view that the contents of at least some of one's mental states are dependent in part on their relationship to the external world or one's environment.

Functionalism For philosophy of mind, functionalism is a philosophical position holding that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, their causal relations to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs. Since mental states are identified by a functional role, they are said to be multiply realizable; in other words, they are able to be manifested in various systems, even perhaps computers, so long as the system performs the appropriate functions.

Compatibilism For metaphysics, it is the idea that free will and determinism are compatible ideas and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. Compatibilism is also known by the name, soft determinism.

Internalism Contrasted with externalism, internalism names several distinct views across several branches of philosophy. For example, in moral philosophy a motivational internalist claims that moral judgments are intrinsically motivating. In epistemology, an internalism about justification claims that everything necessary to provide justification for a belief must be immediately available in an agent's conscious. In philosophy of mind, internalism is the view that the contents of all of one's mental states are independent of their relationship to the external world or one's environment.

Logical atomism The theory that the world consists of ultimate logical "facts" (or "atoms") that cannot be broken down any further.

Logical positivism Logical positivism (or logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism, the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation.

Moral particularism Moral particularism is the idea that there are not any moral principles and that moral judgement can be found only as one decides particular cases, either real or imagined.

Naturalism Naturalism is the idea that the scientific method (hypothesize, predict, test, repeat) is the only effective way to investigate reality. Defended most notably by Willard Van Orman Quine with his work to reduce epistemology to psychology.

Neopragmatism Neopragmatism, sometimes called linguistic pragmatism, is a recent (since the 1960s) philosophical term for philosophy that reintroduces many concepts from pragmatism. It has been associated with a variety of thinkers, among them Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Stanley Fish though none of these people have called themselves "neopragmatists".

Non-cognitivism For metaethics, non-cognitivism is the idea that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false. Examples of this idea emotivism, Universal prescriptivism, quasi-realism, and expressivism.

Ordinary language philosophy Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approached traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by forgetting what words actually mean in a language.

Physicalism For philosophy of mind and metaphysics, physicalism is the idea that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. The term was invented by Otto Neurath in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject.

Property dualism For the philosophy of mind, the idea that, although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Quietism For metaphilosophy, the idea that the role of philosophy is therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive theses to contribute, but rather that its value is in defusing confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects.

Reliabilism For epistemology, the idea has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief. As a theory of knowledge, reliabilism can be roughly stated as follows: "One knows that p (p stands for any proposition—e.g., that the sky is blue) if and only if p is true, one believes that p is true, and one has arrived at the belief that p through some reliable process." As a theory of justified belief, reliabilism can be formulated roughly as follows: "One has a justified belief that p if, and only if, the belief is the result of a reliable process."

Scientific realism and Scientific antirealism For the philosophy of science, the idea that the entities described by scientific theories (e.g., quarks, mesons, double-helix molecules) really exist and the opposing idea that they do not exist but are rather something like a useful fiction, social construction, etc. See also Australian realism, Instrumentalism, and Entity realism.

Substance dualism For the philosophy of mind, the idea that there exist two kinds of substance: physical and non-physical (the mind), and subsequently also two kinds of properties which adhere in those respective substances.

Verificationism Verificationism is the idea that a statement or question only has meaning if there is some way to determine if the statement is true, or what the answer to the question is.

Virtue Ethics The contemporary revival of virtue theory is frequently traced to the philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe's 1958 essay, Modern Moral Philosophy and to Philippa Foot, who published a collection of essays in 1978 entitled Virtues and Vices.

See also

• Continental philosophy
• Postanalytic philosophy
• Scientism

References

• Aristotle, Metaphysics
• Geach, P., Mental Acts, London 1957
• Kenny, A.J.P., Wittgenstein, London 1973.
• Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Further reading

• The London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein
• Dummett, Michael. The Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Hirschberger, Johannes. A Short History of Western Philosophy, ed. Clare Hay. Short History of Western Philosophy, A. ISBN 978-0-7188-3092-2
• Hylton, Peter. Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Soames, Scott. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 1, The Dawn of Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
• Passmore, John. A Hundred Years of Philosophy, revised ed. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
• Weitz, Morris, ed. Twentieth Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition. New York: Free Press, 1966.

External links

• Analytic philosophy entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Analytic philosophy at DMOZ