Analytic Philosophy in America : And Other Historical and Contemporary Essays / Scott Soames.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Soames, Scott, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy, American--20th century.

Philosophy, American.

Analysis (Philosophy)--United States--History--20th century.

Analysis (Philosophy).

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 p.)

Edition:

Core Textbook

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world's most vigorous philosophical tradition. The central essay chronicles how analytic philosophy developed in the United States out of American pragmatism, the impact of European visitors and immigrants, the midcentury transformation of the Harvard philosophy department, and the rapid spread of the analytic approach that followed. Another essay explains the methodology guiding analytic philosophy, from the logicism of Frege and Russell through Wittgenstein's linguistic turn and Carnap's vision of replacing metaphysics with philosophy of science. Further essays review advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics that laid the foundation for a rigorous, scientific study of language, meaning, and information. Other essays discuss W.V.O. Quine, David K. Lewis, Saul Kripke, the Frege-Russell analysis of quantification, Russell's attempt to eliminate sets with his "no class theory," and the Quine-Carnap dispute over meaning and ontology. The collection then turns to topics at the frontier of philosophy of language. The final essays, combining philosophy of language and law, advance a sophisticated originalist theory of interpretation and apply it to U.S. constitutional rulings about due process.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Origins of These Essays

Part One: Milestones

1. Analytic Philosophy in America

2. Methodology in Late Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy

3. Language, Meaning, and Information

4. For Want of Cognitively Defined Propositions

5. The Place of Willard Van Orman Quine in Analytic Philosophy

6. David Lewis's Place in Analytic Philosophy

7. Kripke on Epistemic and Metaphysical Possibility

Part Two: Historical Problems and Controversies

8. What Is the Frege/Russell Analysis of Quantification?

9. No Class

10. Ontology, Analyticity, and Meaning

Part Three: Current Topics

11. Two Versions of Millianism

12. What Are Natural Kinds?

13. Vagueness and the Law

14. Toward a Theory of Legal Interpretation

15. Deferentialism

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9781400850464

1400850460

OCLC:

871636155