Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: The Dawn of Analysis

432 Pages·2003·1.3 MB·english

by  Scott Soames

PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
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PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
in the
TWENTIETH
CENTURY
1
VOLUME
THE DAWN OF ANALYSIS
Scott Soames
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2003 by Princeton University Press
Published by
Princeton University Press,
41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom:
Princeton University Press,
3 Market Place,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 0-691-11573-7
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Soames, Scott.
Philosophical analysis in the twentieth century/Scott Soames.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: v. 1. The dawn of analysis.
ISBN: 0-691-11573-7 (v. 1: alk. paper)
1. Analysis (Philosophy) 2. Methodology—History—20th century.
3. Philosophy—History—20th century. I. Title.
B808.5 .S63 2003 2002042724
146(cid:1).4—dc21
This book has been composed in Galliard
Printed on acid-free paper. (cid:2)
www.pupress.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
this volume is dedicated
to my son
GREG
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction to the Two Volumes xi
PART ONE:
G. E. MOORE ON ETHICS, EPISTEMOLOGY,
AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS 1
CHAPTER 1
Common Sense and Philosophical Analysis 3
CHAPTER 2
Moore on Skepticism, Perception, and Knowledge 12
CHAPTER 3
Moore on Goodness and the Foundations of Ethics 34
CHAPTER 4
The Legacies and Lost Opportunities of Moore’s Ethics 71
Suggested Further Reading 89
PART TWO:
BERTRAND RUSSELL ON LOGICAL
AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS 91
CHAPTER 5
Logical Form, Grammatical Form, and
the Theory of Descriptions 93
CHAPTER 6
Logic and Mathematics: The Logicist Reduction 132
CHAPTER 7
Logical Constructions and the External World 165
CHAPTER 8
Russell’s Logical Atomism 182
Suggested Further Reading 194
viii CONTENTS
PART THREE:
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN’S TRACTATUS 195
CHAPTER 9
The Metaphysics of the Tractatus 197
CHAPTER 10
Meaning, Truth, and Logic in the Tractatus 214
CHAPTER 11
The Tractarian Test of Intelligibility and Its Consequences 234
Suggested Further Reading 254
PART FOUR:
LOGICAL POSITIVISM, EMOTIVISM, AND ETHICS 255
CHAPTER 12
The Logical Positivists on Necessity and Apriori Knowledge 257
CHAPTER 13
The Rise and Fall of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning 271
CHAPTER 14
Emotivism and Its Critics 300
CHAPTER 15
Normative Ethics in the Era of Emotivism:
The Anticonsequentialism of Sir David Ross 320
Suggested Further Reading 346
PART FIVE:
THE POST-POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE OF
THE EARLY W. V. QUINE 349
CHAPTER 16
The Analytic and the Synthetic, the Necessary
and the Possible, the Apriori and the Aposteriori 351
CHAPTER 17
Meaning and Holistic Verificationism 378
Suggested Further Reading 406
Index 409
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE TWO VOLUMES of this history grew out of two lecture
courses given at Princeton University, the one that led to the first
volume for a period of many years, the one that spawned the sec-
ond in 1998, 2000, and 2002. The idea for the volumes was originally
suggested to me by my one-time student, now friend and professional
colleague, Jonathan Vogel, on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge one
hot summer evening sometime in the mid-nineties. The genesis of the
volumes in the courses in reflected both in the topics taken up, and in
the level at which they are discussed. Although the origin of the work
has resulted in omissions of some philosophically important technical
material—e.g., from Frege, Tarski, Carnap, and Kripke (which I hope to
cover in later work)—it has also made for a more widely accessible fin-
ished product. All the material in these volumes has been presented to
upper-division undergraduates and beginning graduate students—a fact
which, I would like to think, has led to an emphasis on large, compre-
hensible themes with a minimum of inessential detail.
I am grateful to four people for reading and commenting on the
manuscript for volume 1—my Princeton colleague, Mark Greenberg,
my longtime friend and philosophical confidant, Ali Kazmi, a reader
for the Princeton University Press, John Hawthorne, and my student,
Jeff Speaks. All four read the manuscript carefully and provided me
with detailed and helpful criticisms. In addition to discussing impor-
tant philosophical issues with me, Jeff played a large role in helping to
produce the manuscript, and in making significant stylistic suggestions,
such as the outline at the beginning of each chapter. Finally, I would
like to thank my editor at the Press, Ian Malcolm, for his stewardship
of the volumes, and Martha Dencker for her encouragement and un-
derstanding, which helped speed my work on the project.