Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Essential Analytic Philosophy - Slides PDF
Essential Analytic Philosophy - Slides PDF
ahti-veikko.pietarinen@helsinki.fi
Professor, University of Helsinki
Department of Philosophy, History, Culture, and Art Studies
Wuhan Daxue
April 2011
In this mini-course of ten lectures, I will go through some of the basic principles that
characterize analytic philosophy in the western philosophical tradition. First we introduce the
key notions of analytic philosophy. Then we discuss the nature of arguments and issues in
philosophy of science. The last two lectures are practical in their orientation and address the
matters of writing and publishing research papers in philosophy, concluding with some
thoughts on the profession of academic philosophy.
Finland Factbook:
Population: 5.223.442
Languages:
Finnish 92% (official)
Swedish 5.6% (official)
Independence since
1917. Previously a
Grand Duchy in the
Russian Empire for 108
years, and a part of
Sweden for 600 years
before that.
188.000 lakes; 98.000
islands.
Beer drank by Finns /
year 404.193.000 litres.
Over 30 books:
• Socratic Epistemology (2007)
• The Principles of Mathematics Revisited (1996)
• The Game of Logic (1979)
• Knowledge and Belief (1962)
• Form and Content in Quantification Theory (1953)
And over 300 papers...
Essential Analytic Philosophy 4
1989 2006
In this lecture, I look into the characteristic features of the mainstream western
philosophy, commonly known as analytic philosophy. What is it? What are its
methods? What distinguishes it from other areas of philosophy, such as continental
philosophy? How was it born? What is the situation in the contemporary scenery of
analytic philosophy?
The dominant form of Western philosophy
Roughly 100 years old
Continuous with the philosophical tradition from the
Antiquity
Not only Anglo-American:
Roots in the Central European thought (Bolzano, Frege, the VC)
Dominant also in Scandinavia; increasingly in Germany, France,...
Began as a ’revolutionary’ movement, now mainstream
Situation now: Crisis? Post-analytic philosophy?
Philosophy of Science
Phenomenology
Continental Analytic
Aesthetics
Political philosophy
Ethics
Structuralism
Feminism Experimental
Applied ethics philosophy
Practical
Essential Analytic Philosophy 11
Theoretical Austin, Kripke Russell
Davidson, Searle Frege, Dummett
M&E
Continental Analytic
Aesthetics
Rawls
Ethics
Derrida
Kristeva
Applied ethics Experimental
philosophy
Practical
Essential Analytic Philosophy 12
When a beep sounded, a subject had to write down what was
his/her ”last undisturbed moment of inner experience”
(Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel 2009)
One setting was a philosophy talk (at APA meeting)
The result: People rarely report thinking about the talk:
1. Thinking that he should put his cell phone away;
2. Scratching an itch, noticing how it feels; having a visual experience of a book;
3. Feeling like he's about to fade into a sweet daydream but no sense of its
content yet;
4. Feeling confused; listening to speaker and reading along on handout, taking in
the meaning;
5. Visual imagery of the “macaroni orange” of a recently seen flyer; skanky taste
of coffee; fantasizing about biting an apple instead of tasting coffee; feeling
need to go to bathroom; hearing the speaker’s sentence;
6. Reading abstract for next talk; hearing an “echo” of the speaker’s last
sentence; fighting a feeling of tiredness.
Essential Analytic Philosophy 13
Analysis (Greek: ’loosen up’, ’dissolve’) :
1. Progressive analysis
Plato/Socrates: decomposition of concepts
▪ ’Human being’ (analysandum): rational + animal (analysans)
▪ Knowledge = justified true belief
2. Regressive analysis
Aristotle, Euclid: start with the proposition and try to find the
first causes or principles that demonstrate the proposition
▪ For example, Pythagoras’s Theorem
Wuhan Daxue
April 2011
This lecture takes a look at the notion of analysis. We observe some developments
in analytic philosophy variously found in the works of Frege, Russell, Carnap,
Quine, Donald Davidson, J.L. Austin and Paul Grice, for example.
What is Analytic Philosophy?
Study of meaning
1. The first attempt (1900-1950):
Search for foundations, do it by reduction:
1. Phenomenalism (logical positivism)
2. Behaviourism
3. Conventionalism (social, linguistic)
4. Logicism
Conceptual, logical analysis (later the ’Linguistic Turn’)
1. Analyse ordinary language
2. Develop better, ideal, formal, symbolic, artificial language
(especially the Unity of Science Movement)
Essential Analytic Philosophy 21
There were problems finding the foundations!
2. The second attempt (1950-):
Rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction
▪ Quine (”Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, 1951)
Rejection of conceptual schemas (critique of Quine)
▪ Davidson (”On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, 1975)
Criticism of the fact-value distinction
▪ Austin-Searle (speech act theory); Paul Grice (logic of communication)
▪ Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History, 1981)
Rejection of foundationalism
▪ Wittgenstein...
Wuhan Daxue
27.4.2011
Reading: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html
Fisher: The Logic of Real Arguments.
http://consc.net/misc/proofs.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A
http://inquiry.mcdaniel.edu/videos/CrossfireIntelligentDesign.swf
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html
Wuhan Daxue
28.4.2011
Wuhan Daxue
29.4.2011
Readings: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/philosophy.html.
Shatz, D. (2004). ”Peer Review and the Marketplace of Ideas”, in Peer Review: A Critical Inquiry.
In these last two lectures, we look inside the academic profession of philosophy in the
Western tradition. The first lecture focuses on how to write and publish papers in
philosophical journals. What do the editors and reviewers expect of a submission? How
does the peer review work? What was the Sokal Affair? How to find the right journal? What
is the today’s publication scene in philosophy?
Before writing, think of
1. to whom do you write?
2. the scientific attitude
3. how to make the research plan
1. What is the philosophical question/problem?
2. What is the context?
3. How to tackle the problem? What methods to use?
4. What is the thesis/result/conclusion?
4. Then comes the implementation (the writing
process, also known as perspiration)...
Essential Analytic Philosophy 59
1. What is the area of investigation?
2. What kinds of research problems are there?
3. For what questions you are searching for answers?
4. Then try make the topic more precise
5. Make a structure of the plan
6. Formulate a preliminary thesis
7. Is the plan now feasible?
8. Is the topic worth investigating?
9. What is the expected contribution?
10. What background theories are needed?
11. How is the plan connected with what has been done before?
12. How do you search for answers? How to solve the problems?
13. Do some interesting conclusions follow?
Essential Analytic Philosophy 60
Some common problems in the topic selection:
1. too broad (or too narrow) topic
2. trendy topics
3. ignoring the research strengths of the institution
4. choosing any topic from the instructor
5. changing the topics often
Wuhan Daxue
29.4.2011
This last lecture presents some thoughts on the status of philosophy in present-day
academia. Questions to be taken up include: What is the difference between being a
philosopher and being a philosophy professor? What is the real work professors get to do at
the universities? What is the relationship to other disciplines? Is philosophy science,
humanities, or neither? What is the contribution academic philosophy has to the society?
Where is philosophy now and where is it going?
1. How do philosophers and philosophy professors differ from
one another?
2. What is the real work philosophers get to do at the
universities?
3. What characterises professionalism?
4. And what characterises academic job hunting?
5. How does philosophy relate to other disciplines?
6. What is the contribution of philosophy to the society?
7. Where is philosophy?
8. What does the future of philosophy look like?
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/04/05/stanley
http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/
Feibelman, P.J. 1993. A PhD Is Not Enough! A Guide to Survival in Science,
Cambridge: Mass.: Perseus Books.
Feynman, R.P. 1985. ”Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Reading:
Vintage.
Fisher, Alec 2004. The Logic of Real Arguments, 2nd Edition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Menand, Louis 2010. The Marketplace of Ideas, New York: Norton.
Smyllyan, Raymond 1978. What is the Name of This Book?, Prentice-Hall.