History of Analytic Philosophy

This course is meant as an introduction to Wittgenstein's later work, with a focus on his *Philosophical Investigations.* Our central concerns will be: (1) Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy; (2) meaning, rule-following, and intentionality; and (3) sensations and privacy. (III)

The goal of this course is to have MAPH students explore the historical origins of analytic philosophy. Beginning with Bolzano and Frege, we will look at the development of analytic philosophy through the work of figures such as Russell, Wittgenstein and Carnap, looking also at the rise and fall of positivism. At the end of the course, MAPH students should have a more solid understanding of the central issues that have shaped modern American-European analytic philosophy, and some of the important ways in which this tradition diverges from contemporary continental philosophy. We will use Coffa's 'The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station' as our main textbook, supplementing it with other materials when necessary.

This course will be structured around a close reading of Sellars's seminal "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." Each week we will read between one and three major sections of that work (out of sixteen sections in all), along with relevant background material illustrating the kinds of positions that Sellars was reacting to and drawing from (including such authors as Russell, Ayer, CI Lewis, Schlick, Carnap, and Ryle), other selections from Sellars's works (including the essays in the anthology In the Space of Reasons, Science and Metaphysics, and "The Structure of Knowledge"), and relevant recent secondary literature on Sellars's thought (from authors such as Brandom, McDowell, Rosenberg, DeVries, O'Shea, Michael Williams, Lance, Kukla etc.). (III)

This course will have three foci: 1) a close reading of some of the central parts of Wittgenstein’s difficult and puzzling early work, the Tractatus, along with related writings by Wittgenstein, 2) an equally close reading of G. E. M. Anscombe’s under-appreciated classic An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus , and 3) a discussion of some of the related recent secondary literature on the Tractatus, as well as on Anscombe’s reading of it. Readings will include texts by Conant, Diamond, Frege, Geach, Goldfarb, Kremer, Ramsey, Ricketts, and Sullivan. (III)

Barry Stroud has made significant contributions to disparate topics in epistemology, metaphysics and the history of philosophy. His work is nonetheless unified by an overarching concern: to get into view, and take the measure of, the perennial philosophical aspiration to arrive at a completely general understanding of the relationship between the world and our conception of it. This orientation is unusual among philosophers working in the later analytic tradition. In Stroud's case it is combined with a probing exploration of questions about philosophy itself -- about its aims, its nature, and its prospects. A related recurring ambition of his work is to strictly think through the similarities and differences between the empiricist and idealist projects, thereby revealing insights and limitations in each. His work in the history of philosophy takes up these topics in connection with, above all, the following quartet of figures: Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein. It seeks at every point to bring out what is still philosophically alive and important in the thought of each of these authors. Stroud's work in epistemology is marked by one of the most sustained engagements with philosophical skepticism to be found in the analytic tradition, as well as with the writings of those in that tradition who themselves wrestled most with problems of skepticism -- Moore, Austin, Clarke, Cavell. Relatedly, throughout his work in metaphysics, Stroud is especially concerned to explore the nature of those categories of thinking -- such as causality, modality, and value -- that, on the one hand, appear to be essential to human thought as we know it, and yet, on the other hand, seem to be especially difficult to accommodate within a contemporary philosophical view of what ought to be regarded as belonging to the fundamental features of reality. We will read through his major writings, with one eye trained on his particular contributions to understanding these figures and topics, while seeking to uncover the underlying unity of Stroud's own overall conception of the nature and difficulty of philosophy. (III)

This course is designed to provide MAPH students with an introduction to some recent and ongoing debates between philosophers working in the analytic tradition. The course is, however, neither a history nor an overview of analytic philosophy. Instead, we will focus on three different debates, spending about three weeks on each. We will likely consider one debate in metaphysics (on the freedom of the will), one in metaethics (on “constitutivism”), and one in epistemology (on the nature of knowledge and reasons for belief).

A close reading of Philosophical Investigations. Topics include: meaning, justification, rule following, inference, sensation, intentionality, and the nature of philosophy. Supplementary readings will be drawn from Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics and other later writings. (III) (B)

This course will have four foci: 1) a close reading of the verba ipsissima of Philosophical Investigations and a handful of closely related writings by Wittgenstein; 2) an overview of the history of the reception of the book and some of the most influential readings it has occasioned; 3) a discussion of a handful of recent debates in the secondary literature on some its most contested sequences of sections – including those on ostensive definition, the critique of Wittgenstein’s early work, the nature of philosophy, rule-following, practices/forms of life, the so-called private language argument, the nature of first-person authority, and the relations between meaning and use, inner and outer, criteria and mental states, sensations and discursive forms of mindedness; 4) an assessment of how best to interpret the overall aims, methods, and teachings that confer unity on the work as a whole, with special attention to the conception of philosophy at work in the Philosophical Investigations . Throughout the course, we will seek to evaluate some of the most influential options put forward in the secondary literature regarding how to read the book, with a special focus on various aspects of the controversy surrounding so-called “quietest” and “anti-quietest” interpretations of the aims and methods of the work. Readings will include texts by Albritton, Anscombe, Baker, Brandom, Browne, Cavell, Child, Cook, Diamond, Goldfarb, Hacker, Kripke, Kuusela, Malcolm, McDowell, Pitcher, Schulte, Stroud, and Wright. (III)

Elizabeth Anscombe has deeply influenced moral philosophy ever since the publication of her book Intention and the article "Modern Moral Philosophy". The rise of contemporary Virtue Ethics is only one indication of this influence; and the important themes addressed in those writings are only some among a great many topics raised and absorbingly discussed in Anscombe's work on ethics and matters moral. This class is intended to track and discuss the most central issues she brings to our attention in her uniquely original and searching way. It is to cover both questions in the area of "meta-ethics" and the discussion of basic moral standards, including such topics as: Teleological and psychological foundations; Kinds and sources of practical necessity; The importance of truth; Practical reasoning; Morally relevant action descriptions; Intention and consequence; "linguistically created" institutions; Knowledge and certainty in moral matters; Upbringing versus conscience; Sex and marriage; War and murder; Man's spiritual nature. (I) (A)

The course will take up a number of themes that are central to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as they arise in the history of philosophical thought about logic— themes that arise out of questions such as the following: What is the status of the basic law(s) of logic?; Is it possible to draw a limit to logical thought?, What is the status of the reflecting subject of logical inquiry?; What is the relation between the logical and the psychological?; What, if anything ,is the relation between the following two inquiries into forms of unity: “What is the unity of the judgment (or the proposition)?" and “What is the unity of the judging subject?”; What (if any) sort of distinction between form and matter is relevant to logic?; How should one understand the formality of logic?; How, and how deeply, does language matter to logic? Topics will include various aspects of Aristotle's logical theory and metaphysics, Descartes’s Doctrine of the Creation of Eternal Truth, Kant on Pure General and Transcendental Logic, Frege on the nature of a proper Begriffsschrift and what it takes to understand what that it is, and early Wittgenstein’s inheritance and treatment of all of the above. Secondary readings will be from Jan Lukasiewicz, John MacFarlane, Clinton Tolley, Sebastian Roedl, Matt Boyle, John McDowell, Elizabeth Anscombe, Cora Diamond, Peter Geach, Matthias Haase, Thomas Ricketts, and Peter Sullivan. (III or V)