The British philosopher Michael Dummett (1925–2011) not only had a massive influence on the development of analytical philosophy within the philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics, but also contributed significantly to historical and metaphilosophical debates about the nature of this philosophical movement and its proper account. He proposed to define analytical philosophy as philosophy whose aim is the analysis of the structure of thought by way of the analysis of language. Hence, it is philosophy the gist of which (...) is the linguistic turn. A number of critics of this proposal (including Barry Smith, Peter Hylton, and Hans-Johann Glock) emphasised that Dummett’s proposal captures merely some features of this diversified and multifaceted philosophical tradition, and is far from being historically adequate. (shrink)

The article explores the concept of scientific philosophy as understood by members of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The author argues that according to Twardowski and his students, philosophy should be done as an exact discipline which ought to be pursued in critical and collaborative spirit. Selected views on scientific philosophy are analyzed, including ideas of Ajdukiewicz, Zawirski, and Dąmbska. It is claimed that though the conception of scientific philosophy is beset with crucial and fundamental ambiguities, it was far more important for (...) the Lvov-Warsaw School than the idea of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

It is often assumed that any attempt to undermine the so-called correspondence theory of truth is motivated by the conviction that truth is an idea which should be more or less forgotten in our postmodernist period. However, this is not always the case. One can believe that truth is one of our indispensable concepts but at the same time argue that the correspondence theory of truth is not a proper and illuminating theory of that concept. This position is reasonable, since (...) - as it has been shown (e.g. by Huw Price and Michael Dummett) - without the notion of truth one would not be able to provide a coherent and satisfactory account of our discursive practice and linguistic meaning. Moreover, as it has been recently argued by David Lewis, the correspondence theory is not a stable account of that concept, and it faces the following dilemma: either (putting aside some minor and irrelevant differences) it turns into a minimalist or redundancy theory of some sort, or it becomes a (mostly) metaphysical theory about various kinds of things which make our statements true. Defenders of the correspondence theory have made some efforts to meet the challenge posed by Lewis, but those efforts do not seem successful. Hence we should perhaps not longer consider the correspondence theory as a major and clearly specifiable contender in the debate about truth, and thus significantly reshape it. (shrink)

Sir Michael Dummett belongs to a small group of the greatest analytical philosophers of the second half of the 20th century, and presumably it would be no exaggeration to consider him the most prominent and influential British philosopher over the last three decades. He has published numerous articles, not only in the field of philosophy. However, a reader willing to learn his recent views is going to face some problems. Although Dummett’s most extended monograph — The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (...) — being a systematic exposition of his own views, was published relatively not so long ago, large parts of it, presented as The William James Lectures at the Harvard University, originally have even come from 1976. From this earlier material, the reader can hardly separate what Dummett has added when preparing this monograph to publication, at the end of the 1980s. (shrink)

One of the main differences between Quine’s and Davidson’s theories of knowledge and mind lies in their accounts of the content of perception and the way in which it contributes to our knowledge of the external world. Both thinkers are very sensitive to these differences and it has been the subject of discussion between them in recent publications. To put it very roughly, Quine holds firmly to the position that although we finally manage to get veridical knowledge of the external (...) world, the content of our perceptions are just the triggerings of our sense receptors that give us reliable clues about the objects and happenings in our environment. Davidson considers this view to be a naturalized successor of an older defective empiricism which should be abandoned. In its place he proposes an externalist theory of perceptual content, according to which content is fully determined or constituted by the objects and events in the external world. This move, among other things, bypasses many of the troubles that Quine’s approach faces and gives a solid ground for our intersubjective communication. In other words, if the central concern of Quine’s epistemological project is epistemology naturalized, so the central concern of Davidson’s corresponding project is epistemology externalised. (shrink)

Terry Horgan has put forward an original account of truth as correct assertibility. That statement suggests that he defends some version of the epistemic conception of truth. However, this is not his intention. Horgan wants to overcome the familiar opposition between the robust correspondence theories of truth and the epistemic theories of truth by elaborating an intermediate or middle-of-the-road position. After presenting the main ideas of that position, I argue that it is less distinctive than Horgan maintains, and may be (...) accommodated to the epistemic theories of truth, provided they are construed widely enough. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) was prone to change his mind on variety of philosophical issues and almost constantly to modify his views. The last period of the development of his philosophy is known as the phase of commonsense or natural realism, eloquently presented in his 1994 Dewey Lectures. This paper is focused on three facets of his position and tries to identify three difficulties it encounters. Firstly, Putnam claims that in the contemporary realism debate we have, on the one hand, proponents (...) of extravagant metaphysical realism, and, on the other hand, advocates of various versions of irresponsible antirealism. Unfortunately, the delineation of the debate is too coarse-grained, since there are many forms of metaphysical realism, and lumping together various antirealisms is confusing and unhelpful. Secondly, Putnam’s naïve direct realism in the philosophy of perception seems incompatible with his transactional account of perception. Thirdly, for some time Putnam was under a spell of Wittgensteinian quietism that distorted the true character of his philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Although Brandom is critical of some features of narrowly conceived classical pragmatism, at the same time he explicitly embraces a version of pragmatism, both in his overall philosophical outlook, and in his philosophy of language. Brandom’s distinctive theoretical approach is based on what he calls rationalist pragmatism, which is a version of fundamental pragmatism. Within the philosophy of language it takes the form of semantic pragmatism. The paper briefly discusses Brandomian version of fundamental pragmatism and its semantic underpinning, and subsequently (...) formulates a basic dilemma it encounters there. (shrink)

This book is an expanded version of the John Locke lectures delivered at Oxford in 1995 by one of the leading Australian philosophers. Its principal aim is to provide a defense of conceptual analysis against the familiar attacks of W. V. Quine and his followers, and to show that it is an indispensable method of philosophical inquiry. Being suspicious of abstract metaphilosophical declarations, Jackson builds his case for conceptual analysis upon detailed discussions of particular metaphysical and ethical doctrines, such as (...) physicalism, the primary quality view of color, and cognitivism and descriptivism concerning moral discourse. Hence the book is as much an original metaphilosophical study, as an important contribution to analytical metaphysics and ethics. (shrink)

In his latest book, Adam Grobler gives an ingenious account of the main issues of contemporary epistemology, and puts forward an original sandwich theory of knowledge. The paper brings to light pragmatic threads of Grobler’s views, including his approach to scepticism, to the justification of induction, and to the notion of truth. It is suggested that the idea of relative truth, currently rigorously elaborated by John MacFarlane, would be more useful for his purposes than the notion of truth as superassertibility (...) proposed by Crispin Wright. (shrink)

Obszerna antologia Logika i język z analitycznej filozofii języka, do której J. Pelc wybrał i przełożył teksty, była przez wiele lat wykorzystywana w nauczaniu i badaniach w Polsce. W udany sposób przedstawia niektóre dyskusje toczone w ramach filozofii analitycznej. Jednakże obok tekstów kluczowych, które weszły do kanonu tej tradycji, zawiera także prace marginalne i mało znaczące. Zaskakujące jest pominięcie przez Pelca kilku bardzo ważnych filozofów i ich dorobku, a podane we wstępie do antologii uzasadnienie tych braków jest niekompletne i mało (...) przekonujące. (shrink)

Author: Szubka Tadeusz Title: MAIN VARIETIES OF ANALYTIC METAPHYSICS (Główne typy metafizyki analitycznej) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.15, number: 2011/4, pages: 849-864 Keywords: ANALYTIC METAPHYSICS, G.E. MOORE, B. RUSSELL, P.F. STRAWSON, D. DAVIDSON, M. DUMMETT, W.V. QUINE, D.M. ARMSTRONG, D. LEWIS. Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:In a widespread general view about analytic philosophy it is often emphasized the supposed animosity or mistrust of that movement towards metaphysics. That (...) opinion is in many respects one-sided and incorrect. First, one cannot find that animosity towards metaphysics in the works of G.E. Moore and B. Russell, the founders of modern analytic philosophy. Of course, they criticized the speculative, Hegelian metaphysics of their idealistic predecessors, but they did it in order to defend metaphysics of a different kind, more careful, empirical, and realist one. Moreover, even if it is to some extent true that over a few decades analytic philosophy was dominated by the attitude of mistrust towards more theoretical and comprehensive metaphysical investigations, it should be stressed that that attitude has almost completely disappeared in the last fifty years. Metaphysics has again regained the status of central and vigorously pursued philosophical discipline. One of the main originators of that metaphysical turn in contemporary analytic philosophy was Sir P.F. Strawson, the Oxford philosopher, who in 1959 forcefully articulated the idea of descriptive metaphysics. A somewhat similar way of doing metaphysics was later developed in the writings of D. Davidson, M. Dummett, and – in certain respects – H. Putnam. One may say that all those thinkers have attempted to identify the basic structure of reality by describing and elucidating the basic structural features of our thought and talk. Since in such a method of doing metaphysics one can discern some characteristic marks of Kantian transcendental arguments, there is a point to call it analytic-transcendental metaphysics. In a completely different way metaphysics has been pursued by those analytic thinkers who are under heavy influence of the conception of philosophy put forward by W.V. Quine. For Quine philosophy, including metaphysics, is continuous with science, and, to be more precise, constitutes the theoretical end of science. Among many followers of that kind of metaphysics, that may be called analytic-naturalistic one, there are D.M. Armstrong and D. Lewis. The paper presents those two varieties of analytic metaphysics, and succinctly discusses their main difficulties. Subsequently, it mentions those examples of contemporary analytic metaphysics that, for one reason or another, do not belong to either of those two varieties. The paper ends with a brief appendix discussing the most recent revival of metaphysics within the analytic movement and a critical response to it from the deflationary point of view. (shrink)

The paper begins with an account of the emergence of analytic philosophy of language in the twentieth century in the context of the development of logic and the linguistic turn. Subsequently, it describes two examples of analytic philosophy of language in its heyday when the discipline was conceived as first philosophy. Finally, it provides, by way of conclusion, a succinct outline of the current state of philosophy of language, marked by modesty and fragmentation. It is claimed that even if one (...) retains optimism about the prospects of philosophy of language in the first century of the new millennium, it would be unreasonable to disagree with the opinion that the present-day philosophy of language is a highly specialized and diversified discipline and no longer so central for philosophical enterprise as it used to be. (shrink)

One of the most interesting forms of antirealism developed in recent years is the irrealism of Nelson Goodman. According to that position, the widely held belief that there is one real world and one way the world is, and that the aim of our inquiry is to provide a true description of that world, is mistaken. We should not envisage our cognitive activity as involving recognition and description of the unique structure of the world, but rather as engaged in construction (...) of various world versions. It should also be admitted that in this process we, in some important and nontrivial sense, make worlds corresponding to those versions. That is to say, this version of irrealism combines a constructionalist account of our knowledge with radical ontological pluralism. Such a view certainly leads to a relativism of some sort, but Goodman thinks that this is not the relativism of “anything goes” type, since construction and acceptance of world versions is constrained by some standards of rightness. (shrink)

Epistemic conceptions of truth, for which truth is defined in terms of justifiability or assertibility in properly idealized conditions, are very often considered as unavoidably linked with relativism. The paper argues that such a link is not unavoidable. The reason is that there are accounts of justification that do not have relativistic consequences, and therefore one may propose an epistemic conception of truth that does not have those consequences either.

Most current theories of meaning and mental content accept externalism. One of its forceful exponents is Ruth Garrett Millikan. She argues that externalism leads to the abandonment of "the last myth of the given", that is, of the idea that identity of meaning and mental content is somehow unproblematically given to us, and that we can easily recognize the sameness of meaning and mental content. If one refuses such a "mythical" giveness or meaning rationalism, one has to admit that there (...) is no logical possibility known a priori . The paper tries to show that even if one abandons meaning rationalism one can still hold that there are logical possibilities known a priori . The claim is defended by arguing that a priori knowledge is not completely independent from experience and does not demand the absolute transparency of meaning from the first-person point of view. A priori knowledge requires only a priori justification, that is, such a justification that is based merely on relations between meanings or contents. (shrink)

It is quite widely assumed that at the beginning of his career Richard Rorty was an orthodox analytic philosopher, working in its then current mainstream, and especially fascinated by the linguistic turn taken by this tradition. Subsequently he supposedly radically and dramatically changed his views, turning himself from a staunch analytic philosophers into a vigorous critic of the analytic tradition and ultimately paradigmatically postmodern and continental thinker. It is argued in the paper that this common picture exaggerates changes in Rorty’s (...) philosophical views. He certainly has never become fully postmodern and continental philosopher, whatever it means. And what seems more important, he always had a lot of reservations about analytic philosophy and had less hopes of it than one or two passages from his early writings suggest. (shrink)