The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 2 : : A New Vision / / Scott Soames.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DTL Humanities 2020
• VerfasserIn: Soames, Scott,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2017]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (448 p.)

An in-depth history of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, from a leading philosopher of languageThis is the second of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philosopher of language and historian of analytic philosophy, provides the fullest and most detailed account of the analytic tradition yet published, one that is unmatched in its chronological range, topics covered, and depth of treatment. Focusing on the major milestones and distinguishing them from detours, Soames gives a seminal account of where the analytic tradition has been and where it appears to be heading.Volume 2 provides an intensive account of the new vision in analytical philosophy initiated by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, its assimilation by the Vienna Circle of Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, and the subsequent flowering of logical empiricism. With this "linguistic turn," philosophical analysis became philosophy itself, and the discipline's stated aim was transformed from advancing philosophical theories to formalizing, systematizing, and unifying science. In addition to exploring the successes and failures of philosophers who pursued this vision, the book describes how the philosophically minded logicians Kurt Gödel, Alfred Tarski, Alonzo Church, and Alan Turing discovered the scope and limits of logic and developed the mathematical theory of computation that ushered in the digital era. The book's account of this pivotal period closes with a searching examination of the struggle to preserve ethical normativity in a scientific age.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE. THE TRACTATUS: LANGUAGE, MIND AND THE WORLD -- The Abbreviated Metaphysics of the Tractatus -- The Single Great Problem of the Tractatus: Propositions -- The Logic of the Tractatus -- The Tractarian Test of Intelligibility and Its Consequences -- PART TWO. A NEW CONCEPTION OF PHILOSOPHY: LANGUAGE, LOGIC, AND SCIENCE -- The Roots of Logical Empiricism -- Carnap's Aufbau -- The Heyday of Logical Empiricism -- Advances in Logic: Gödel, Tarski, Church, and Turing -- Tarski's Definition of Truth and Carnap's Embrace of "Semantics" -- Analyticity, Necessity, and A Priori Knowledge -- The Rise and Fall of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning -- PART THREE: IS ETHICS POSSIBLE? -- Ethics as Science -- Replacing Ethics with Metaethics: Emotivism and Its Critics -- Normative Ethics and Cognitivist Metaethics in the Age of Emotivism: H. A. Prichard and W. D. Ross -- References -- Index