Arnold G.

Onia Education 200 Reaction Paper

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

Analytic philosophy This movement heralded a linguistic shift according to which the philosophical study of language became the central task of philosophy. Many analytic philosophers concluded that a number of issues prominent in the history of philosophy are unimportant or even meaningless because they arose when philosophers misunderstood or misused language. Analytic philosophy is based upon the assumption that the careful analysis of language and concepts can clear up these problems and confusions. Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, wished to construct a logical language that would reflect the nature of the world. He argued that what he called the surface grammar of everyday language masks a true logical grammar, knowledge of which is essential for understanding the true meaning of statements. Russell and many philosophers influenced by him asserted that complex statements can be reduced to simple components; if their logic does not permit such reduction, then the statements are meaningless. Russells view was central to the development of the so-called Vienna Circle, a group of analytic philosophers active from about 1920 to 1950, who were led by Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick. The members of the Vienna Circle were scientists or mathematicians as well as philosophers, and they originated the movement known as logical positivism. They believed that the clarification of meaning is the task of philosophy, and that all meaningful statements are either scientifically verifiable statements about the world or else logical tautologies (self-evident propositions). According to the logical positivists the discovery of new facts belongs to science, and metaphysicsthe construction of comprehensive truths about realityis a pretentious pseudo-science.

dynamic timeline Jean-Paul Sartre Writes Being and Nothingness

Wittgenstein, who studied with Russell at Cambridge University, was perhaps the most important analytic philosopher. Like Russell, he distrusted ordinary language. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) Wittgenstein stated that philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophys function, he believed, is to monitor the use of language by reducing complex statements to their elementary components and by rebuffing all attempts to misuse words in creating the illusion of philosophical depth. What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must consign to silence. The Tractatus made important contributions to the philosophy of language, logic, and the philosophy of mathematics. The account of language in Wittgensteins later work was much richer and more sophisticated than that in the Tractatus. However, Wittgenstein never abandoned his radical early views on the nature of philosophy

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