This is the first single-volume edition and translation of Frege's philosophical writings to include his seminal papers as well as substantial selections from ...

In this investigation into Frege's philosophical views as a whole, the central focus is on his notion of sense, the conception that has proved most influential in the development of analytical philosophy, and around which the main problems of interpretation revolve.

Analysis has always been at the heart of philosophical method, but it has been understood and practised in many different ways. Perhaps, in its broadest sense, it might be defined as a process of isolating or working back to what is more fundamental by means of which something, initially taken as given, can be explained or reconstructed. The explanation or reconstruction is often then exhibited in a corresponding process of synthesis. This allows great variation in specific method, however. The aim (...) may be to get back to basics, but there may be all sorts of ways of doing this, each of which might be called ‘analysis’. The dominance of ‘analytic’ philosophy in the Englishspeaking world, and increasingly now in the rest of the world, might suggest that a consensus has formed concerning the role and importance of analysis. This assumes, though, that there is agreement on what ‘analysis’ means, and this is far from clear. On the other hand, Wittgenstein's later critique of analysis in the early (logical atomist) period of analytic philosophy, and Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction, for example, have led some to claim that we are now in a ‘post-analytic’ age. Such criticisms, however, are only directed at particular conceptions of analysis. If we look at the history of philosophy, and even if we just look at the history of analytic philosophy, we find a rich and extensive repertoire of conceptions of analysis which philosophers have continually drawn upon and reconfigured in different ways. Analytic philosophy is alive and well precisely because of the range of conceptions of analysis that it involves. It may have fragmented into various interlocking subtraditions, but those subtraditions are held together by both their shared history and their methodological interconnections. It is the aim of this article to indicate something of.. (shrink)

The main stream of academic philosophy, in Anglophone countries and increasingly worldwide, is identified by the name 'analytic'. The study of its history, from the 19th century to the late 20th, has boomed in recent years. These specially commissioned essays by forty leading scholars constitute the most comprehensive book on the subject.

This collection, with contributions from leading philosophers, places analytic philosophy in a broader context comparing it with the methodology of its most important rival tradition in twentieth-century philosophy--phenomenology, whose development parallels the development of analytic philosophy in many ways. _The Analytic Turn _will be of great interest to historians of philosophy generally, analytic philosophers, and phenomenologists.

Dipping in Chinese waterspulled and pushed by Mowe see how Zhuangzi caught uslike the happy fish we knowwe follow their flowwords matching as they sor.

Seeing-as and Novelty brings together new essays that consider Wittgenstein’s treatment of the phenomenon of aspect perception in relation to the broader idea of conceptual novelty; that is, the acquisition or creation of new concepts, and the application of an acquired understanding in unfamiliar or novel situations. Over the last twenty years, aspect perception has received increasing philosophical attention, largely related to applying Wittgenstein’s remarks on the phenomena of seeing-as, found in Part II of Philosophical Investigations , to issues within (...) philosophical aesthetics. Seeing-as, however, has come to occupy a broader conceptual category, particularly in philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology. The essays in this volume examine the exegetical issues arising within Wittgenstein studies, while also considering the broader utility and implications of the phenomenon of seeing-as in the fields of aesthetics, philosophical psychology, and philosophy of mathematics, with a thematic focus on questions of novelty and creativity. The collection constitutes a fruitful interpretative engagement with the later Wittgenstein, as well as a unique contribution to considerations of philosophical methodology. (shrink)

Ever since I abandoned the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, I have sought solutions of philosophical problems by means of analysis, and I remain firmly persuaded, in spite of some modern tendencies to the contrary, that only by analysing is progress possible. (Russell, My Philosophical Development, ch. 1).

This book is an expanded version of Joan Weiner's introduction to Frege's work in the Oxford University Press ‘Past Masters’ series published in 1999. The earlier book had chapters on Frege's life and character, his basic project, his new logic, his definitions of the numbers, his 1891 essay ‘Function and concept’, his 1892 essays ‘On Sinn and Bedeutung’ and ‘On concept and object’, the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik and the havoc wreaked by Russell's paradox, and a final brief chapter on Frege's (...) influence. To this, Weiner has added two further chapters on Frege's dispute with Hilbert on the foundations of geometry and on the three late essays of his ‘Logical investigations’. There is little change to the content of the earlier chapters, but they have been divided into sections, each with its own heading, which makes it easier to find one's way around.With the two additional chapters, the book provides an excellent introduction to Frege's work from his earliest Begriffsschrift, which gives the first presentation of his new logic, to his three late essays, which expound his views on logic, truth, and thought. As in the earlier version, the focus is on the logicist project that dominated Frege's career: the attempt to demonstrate that arithmetic is reducible to logic. In all her writings on Frege, Weiner has been particularly sensitive to the philosophical …. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 24 This article has three main interconnected aims. First, I illustrate the historiographical conceptions of three early analytic philosophers: Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. Second, I consider some of the historiographical debates that have been generated by the recent historical turn in analytic philosophy, looking at the work of Scott Soames and Hans-Johann Glock, in particular. Third, I discuss Arthur Danto’s _Analytic Philosophy of History_, published 50 years ago, and argue for a reinvigorated analytic philosophy of history.

Starting from an analogy with Quine’s two dogmas of empiricism, I offer a critique of two dogmas of analytic historiography: the belief in a cleavage between the justification of a ph...

In section 308 of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein talks of the first step in philosophizing being ‘the one that altogether escapes notice ... that’s just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter’. In this essay, Michael Beaney explores some of the connections between conceptual creativity and the kind of first steps of which Wittgenstein spoke. Beaney argues that a good example of such a first step is Frege’s use of function–argument analysis and the (...) associated conception of concepts as functions, which led to almost all his characteristic doctrines. And Beaney shows that, while it is tempting to see the conceptual creativity involved in this case—that is, in Frege’s reconceiving concepts as functions—as originating in some ‘Eureka!’ moment and as catching on when others can exclaim ‘Now I can go on!’, all this needs careful description to avoid mythologization. (shrink)

The emergence of analytic philosophy has often been seen as inaugurating a linguistic turn in philosophy, a turn with profound anti-metaphysical implications. Metaphysics and epistemology, on this view, were replaced by logic and philosophy of language as forming the basis of philosophy. But if we look at the work of the four founders of analytic philosophy, Frege, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, we find metaphysical conceptions at the heart of their endeavours. Frege, for example, regarded numbers and the truth-values as logical (...) objects, and the ontological distinction between concept and object was fundamental to his philosophy. Both Russell and Moore in their early work developed a realist view of propositions, and even when Russell abandoned the metaphysics of propositions in his later work, this was simply replaced by a metaphysics of facts. Wittgenstein, too, in the Tractatus, articulated a raft of theses that seem paradigmatically metaphysical, though their precise status has been controversial. In this paper I outline some of the key metaphysical conceptions of Frege, Russell, Moore and the early Wittgenstein, and explore the connections with their logical views, taking as my main example the problem of relational propositions. I end by addressing the question of the status of the metaphysical statements that Frege and Wittgenstein, in particular, found themselves making. (shrink)

The so-called ‘linguistic turn’ that took place in philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century is most strongly associated with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. If there is a single text that might be identified as the source of the linguistic turn, then it is Wittgenstein's first book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in German in 1921 and in an English translation in 1922. Throughout his work, Wittgenstein was concerned with the foundations of language; the crucial shift lay from (...) the appeal to simples to the appeal to samples, and a corresponding shift from assumptions about what lies hidden to an appreciation of what is visible to all in our linguistic practices. This article first outlines the main elements of Wittgenstein's early conception of language, before considering his critique of that conception and his later views. (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 1-12, January 2013.

In this article we discuss Zhang Shizhao’s famous essay “Lun Fanyi Mingyi〈論翻譯名義〉” (On the Meanings of Names in Translation), which played a key role in establishing what is now the standard translation of ‘logic’ into Chinese, sketching the historical context and analyzing and evaluating the argument he gives for providing a phonemic rather than semantic translation.

There was once a princess called Sophia,whose philosophy museum was superior.But most of the storesbecame locked behind doors,which led to collective amnesia.Then along came a band of ajar‐minders,who decided to issue remindersof the treasures insidethat hadn't yet died,and opened the doors to all finders.

This is the first single-volume edition and translation of Frege's philosophical writings to include all of his seminal papers and substantial selections from all three of his major works.

We are not dealing with an event in the history of logic. We are dealing with the ravages of a disease that is attacking the European intellect. If the thoughts of a diseased intellect prove to be paradoxes, there is nothing paradoxical in that. [R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics,p.281].

In ‘Swimming Happily in Chinese Logic’ (2021) I suggested that the root conception of knowing for the ancient Chinese Mohists was knowing-as, a conception that fits well with perspectivism in the Zhuangzi, a key Daoist text. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s discussion of both seeing-as and samples, and developing the analogy between seeing-as and knowing-as, I explore various forms of knowing with particular reference to the Mozi, in attempting to make sense of ancient Chinese epistemology and thereby shed light on the whole (...) phenomenon of knowing. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 24 This article has three main interconnected aims. First, I illustrate the historiographical conceptions of three early analytic philosophers: Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. Second, I consider some of the historiographical debates that have been generated by the recent historical turn in analytic philosophy, looking at the work of Scott Soames and Hans-Johann Glock, in particular. Third, I discuss Arthur Danto’s _Analytic Philosophy of History_, published 50 years ago, and argue for a reinvigorated analytic philosophy of history.

Analytic philosophy, as we recognize it today, has its origins in the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell around the turn of the twentieth century. Both were trained as mathematicians and became interested in the foundations of mathematics. In seeking to demonstrate that arithmetic could be derived from logic, they revolutionized logical theory and in the process developed powerful new forms of logical analysis, which they employed in seeking to resolve certain traditional philosophical problems. There were important differences in (...) their approaches, however, and these approaches are still pursued, adapted, and debated today. In this paper I shall elucidate the origins of analytic philosophy in the work of Frege and Russell and explain the revolutionary significance of their methods of logical analysis. (shrink)

Of all philosophers, it is Frege whom Wittgenstein held in greatest esteem. The aim of philosophy, Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus, “is the logical clarification of thoughts”, a characterization that might well be taken to be true of Frege's philosophy. The clarity that Wittgenstein saw as an important philosophical virtue is arguably nowhere better illustrated than in Frege's writings, even if one disagrees with the substantive philosophical claims that Frege makes. Peter Geach reports a remark that Wittgenstein made to him (...) when they were discussing Frege's essay “On Concept and Object”. Wittgenstein may have envied Frege's style, but he nevertheless felt it had a strong effect on his own writing. Frege is explicitly cited as an influence on the Tractatus, but although he is rarely mentioned by name in his later writings, his views continued to be a major source of inspiration to the very end of Wittgenstein's life. (shrink)

Among his many contributions to philosophy, Carnap’s work also influenced the historiography of philosophy. In his Aufbau of 1928, he introduced the term ‘rational reconstruction’ (‘rationale Nachkonstruction’), which is now known as a central approach to the history of philosophy. Carnap’s own conception, though, had nothing to do with our engagement with the Mighty Dead. It was only later, when subsequent philosophers appropriated the term, that it entered the historiographical debate. In this chapter we sketch the development of the notion (...) of rational reconstruction, ending with a brief reflection on our sketch. (shrink)