Analytical philosophy

Analytical philosophy, The three main foundational planks

1. Analytical Philosophy M.Vijayalakshmi Assistant Professor

2. Analytic Philosophy  (or sometimes  Analytical Philosophy ) is a  20th Century  movement in philosophy which holds that philosophy should apply  logical techniques  in order to attain  conceptual clarity , and that philosophy should be consistent with the success of  modern science . For many Analytic Philosophers,  language  is the  principal  (perhaps the  only ) tool, and philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be  used .

3. Analytic Philosophy is also used as a  catch-all phrase  to include all (mainly  Anglophone ) branches of contemporary philosophy  not included  under the label  Continental Philosophy , such as  Logical Positivism ,  Logicism  and  Ordinary Language Philosophy . To some extent, these various schools all derive from pioneering work at  Cambridge University  in the  early 20th Century  and then at  Oxford University  after  World War II , although many contributors were in fact originally from Continental Europe.

4. Analytic Philosophy  as a specific movement  was led by  Bertrand Russell ,  Alfred North Whitehead ,  G. E. Moore  and  Ludwig Wittgenstein . Turning away from then-dominant forms of  Hegelianism , (particularly objecting to its  Idealism  and its almost deliberate obscurity), they began to develop a new sort of  conceptual analysis  based on new developments in  Logic , and succeeded in making  substantial contributions  to philosophical  Logic  over the  first half of the 20th Century .

5. The three main  foundational planks  of Analytical Philosophy are: that there are no  specifically philosophical  truths and that the  object  of philosophy is the logical  clarification of thoughts . that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the  logical form  of philosophical  propositions , such as by using the  formal grammar  and  symbolism  of a logical system. a rejection of  sweeping  philosophical systems and  grand theories  in favour of close  attention to detail , as well as a defence of  common sense  and  ordinary language  against the pretensions of traditional  Metaphysics  and  Ethics .

6. Early developments  in Analytic Philosophy arose out of the work of the German mathematician and logician  Gottlob Frege ( widely regarded as the  father  of  modern philosophical logic ), and his development of  Predicate Logic .   Bertrand Russell  and  Alfred North Whitehead , particularly in their groundbreaking  "Principia Mathematica "  (1910-1913) and their development of  Symbolic Logic , attempted to show that mathematics is   reducible  to  fundamental logical principles .

7. From about 1910 to 1930, Analytic Philosophers like  Russell  and  Wittgenstein  focused on creating an  ideal language  for philosophical analysis (known as  Ideal Language Analysis  or  Formalism ), which would be free from the  ambiguities  of ordinary language that, in their view, often got philosophers into trouble. In his  " Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus "  of 1921,  Wittgenstein  suggested that the world is merely the existence of certain  states of affairs  which can be expressed in the language of  first-order predicate logic , so that a picture of the world can be built up by expressing  atomic facts  in  atomic propositions , and linking them using  logical operators , a theory sometimes referred to as  Logical Atomism .

8. G. E. Moore , who along with  Bertrand Russell  had been a  pioneer  in his opposition to the dominant  Hegelianism  (and its belief in  Hegel 's  Absolute Idealism ) in the British universities of the  early 20th Century , developed his  epistemological   Commonsense Philosophy , attempting to defend the "commonsense" view of the world against both  Skepticism  and  Idealism .

9. In the late  1920s, 1930s and 1940s ,  Russell  and  Wittgenstein 's Formalism was picked up by the  Vienna Circle  and  Berlin Circle  which developed into the  Logical Positivism  movement, which focused on universal logical terms, supposedly separate from contingent factors such as culture, language, historical conditions. In the late  1940s and 1950s , following  Wittgenstein 's later philosophy, Analytic Philosophy took a turn toward  Ordinary Language Philosophy , which emphasized the use of  ordinary language  by  ordinary people .

10. Following heavy  attacks  on Analytic Philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s, both  Logical Positivism  and  Ordinary Language Philosophy  rapidly  fell out of fashion . However , many philosophers in  Britain  and  America  after the 1970's still considered themselves to be "analytic" philosophers, (generally characterized by  precision  and thoroughness about a  narrow topic ), although less emphasis on  linguistics  and an increased   eclecticism  or  pluralism  characteristic of  Post-Modernism  is also evident.

11. More  contemporary  Analytic Philosophy has also included extensive work in  other areas  of philosophy, such as in  Ethics  by  Phillipa Foot  (1920 - ),  R. M. Hare  (1919 - 2002) and   J. L. Mackie  (1917 - 1981); in  Political Philosophy  by  John Rawls  (1921 - 2002) and  Robert Nozick  (1938 - 2002); in  Aesthetics  by  Arthur Danto  (1924 - 2013); and in  Philosophy of Mind  by  Daniel Dennett  (1942 - ) and  Paul Churchland  (1942 - ).

12. Thank you