History of Analytic Philosophy

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)

A survey of some of the central concerns in various areas of philosophy, pursued from the perspective of the analytic tradition. In epistemology, our topics will include the definition of knowledge, the challenge of skepticism, and the nature of justification. In the philosophy of mind, we will explore the mind-body problem and the nature and structure of intentional states. In the philosophy of language, we will address theories of truth and of speech acts, the sense/reference distinction, and the semantics of names and descriptions. In ethics, we will focus on the debate between utilitarians and Kantians.

We are going to read closely and discuss selected sections from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, with an eye towards understanding the conception of philosophy whose practice Wittgenstein seeks to exemplify in the work. Some prior philosophical education is required: this should not be one’s first class in philosophy. (III)

This course will introduce students to the analytic tradition in philosophy. The aim of the course is to provide an overview of the first half of this tradition, starting from the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift in 1879 and reaching up to the posthumous publication of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations in 1953. The course will focus on four aspects of this period in the history of analytic philosophy: (1) its initial founding phase, as inaugurated in the early seminal writings of Gottlob Frege, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, as well as Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus; (2) the inheritance and reshaping of some of the central ideas of the founders of analytic philosophy at the hands of the members of the Vienna Circle and their critics, especially as developed in the writings of Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick, and W. V. O. Quine, (3) the cross-fertilization of the analytic and Kantian traditions in philosophy and the resulting initiation of a new form of analytic Kantianism, as found in the work of some of the logical positivists, as well as in the writings of some of their main critics, such as C. I. Lewis; (4) the movement of Ordinary Language Philosophy and Oxford Analysis, with a special focus on the writings of Gilbert Ryle and the later Wittgenstein. (B)

In “Knowing How and Knowing That” (1945) and The Concept of Mind (1951), Gilbert Ryle famously argued for a sharp distinction between practical and propositional knowledge. This distinction was settled philosophical orthodoxy for several decades, but has more recently come under attack, beginning with J. Stanley and T. Williamson’s “Knowing How” (2001). Responses to their arguments have spawned a rich literature, from such authors as S. Schiffer, A. Noe, P. Snowdon, A.W. Moore, I. Rumfitt, K. Setiya, J. Hornsby, and many others, leading up to Stanley’s recent book Know How (2011). This course will delve into this literature, beginning with a careful reading of Ryle, briefly considering early responses to his arguments, and then turning to a discussion of Stanley and Williamson, their allies, and their critics. (III)

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. (B) (III)

A survey of some of the central concerns in various areas of philosophy, pursued from the perspective of the analytic tradition. In epistemology, our topics will include the definition of knowledge, the challenge of skepticism, and the nature of justification. In the philosophy of mind, we will explore the mind-body problem and the nature and structure of intentional states. In the philosophy of language, we will address theories of truth and of speech acts, the sense/reference distinction, and the semantics of names and descriptions. In ethics, we will focus on the debate between utilitarians and Kantians.