ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

OR ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY

What is Analytic Philosophy?

A broad philosophical tradition characterized by an

emphasis on clarity and argument (often achieved

via modern formal logic and analysis of language)
and a respect for the natural sciences.
Philosophers attempted to show that mathematics is

reducible to fundamental logical principles.

What is Analytic Philosophy?

For example, the English word "is" has three distinct

meanings which can be parsed in predicate logic as

the following:

For the sentence 'the cat is asleep', the is of

predication means that "x is P" (denoted as P(x))

For the sentence 'there is a cat', the is of existence

means that "there is an x" (x);

For the sentence 'three is half of six', the is of identity

means that "x is the same as y" (x=y).

Ideal Language Analysis

From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like

Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasized

creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis,
which would be free from the ambiguities of ordinary
language that, in their opinion, often made
philosophy invalid.
This philosophical trend can be called "ideal-

language analysis" or "formalism".

Ideal Language Analysis

During this phase, Russell and Wittgenstein sought

to understand language, and hence philosophical

problems, by using formal logic to formalize the way
in which philosophical statements are made.

Logical Positivism
Logical positivism used formal logical methods to

develop an empiricist account of knowledge.

Philosophers claimed that the truths of logic and

mathematics were tautologies (formulas that

are true in every possible interpretation), and
those of science were verifiable empirical claims.

Logical Positivism
These two constituted the entire universe of

meaningful judgments; anything else was nonsense.

The claims of ethics, aesthetics and theology were,

accordingly, pseudo-statements, neither true nor

false, simply meaningless.

Ethics in Analytic Philosophy

Philosophers working in the analytic tradition have

gradually come to distinguish three major branches of

moral philosophy.
Meta-ethics whose function is the investigation of moral
terms and concepts
Normative ethics whose function is the examination and
production of normative ethical judgments
Applied ethics whose function is the investigation of how
existing normative principles should be applied in difficult
or borderline cases, often cases created by the appearance
of new technologies or new scientific knowledge.

Analytic Metaphysics
Philosophers working in the analytic tradition have

gradually come to distinguish three major branches of

moral philosophy.
Meta-ethics whose function is the investigation of moral
terms and concepts
Normative ethics whose function is the examination and
production of normative ethical judgments
Applied ethics whose function is the investigation of how
existing normative principles should be applied in difficult
or borderline cases, often cases created by the appearance
of new technologies or new scientific knowledge.