| PHIL
109 -- Origins of Analytic Philosophy Winter 2009 |
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| Instructor:
Clinton Tolley office: HSS 8061 hours: tba phone: 2-2686 email: ctolley [at] ucsd.edu |
Teaching Assistant:
{to be determined} office: --- hours: --- phone: --- email: --- |
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| Time:
11:00am--12:20am Location: Warren Lecture Hall (WLH) 2206 [map] |
| {available at Groundwork Books} Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918) Open Court, 1985 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) Pears/McGuinness, tr., Routledge, 2001 A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936/46) 2nd ed., Dover, 1956 ** additional required readings to be made available on WebCT from: |
| tbd {also available at Groundwork Books} |
| The main questions we
will address include: What would it mean for 'analysis' to be the
proper
method of philosophy? What are the prospects for such a
proposal? What are the tools (logical?
conceptual? linguistic? psychological?) to be used in
distinctively philosophical analysis? Can a philosophy grounded
in, and limited to, analysis claim to be 'first' philosophy, if it has
to presuppose that there is something there to be analyzed, and if it
has to presuppose the validity of its own method to provide
knowledge? Among all that is 'there' already prior to analysis
(the world? our minds? language? science?), what is to be the primary
focus of analysis? How can analysis ever lead to new knowledge
(tell us something we don't already implicitly know),
or is it ultimately and essentially conservative? Why should
analysis be the
only valid method for all forms
of philosophical inquiry (even, say, in ethics and aesthetics)?
If we cannot conceive of certain traditional philosophical
questions and projects (in, say, metaphysics) as ones which can be
resolved through analysis, what should we say about them? Would
this mean that the questions themselves are invalid or
meaningless? But then why would we have been tempted to ask them
in the first place, and so frequently throughout the history of
philosophy? We will try to answer these questions by working through proposals made by the central figures in the historical development of the tradition which has come to be known as 'analytic' philosophy: Gottlob FREGE (1848–1925), G.E. MOORE (1873–1958), Bertrand RUSSELL (1872–1970), Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951), Rudolf CARNAP (1891–1970), A.J. AYER (1910–89), and W.V. QUINE (1908–2000). Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of instructor. Note: May be repeated for credit with change in content and approval of the instructor. |
| mid-term exam (1500
words); due 5th week final paper (2500 words); due exam week attendance |
| {tbd} |
| Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
entries (requires sign-in) Overview of 'analytical
philosophy'
Gottlob Frege G.E. Moore Bertrand Russell Ludwig Wittgenstein Rudolf Carnap A.J. Ayer The Vienna Circle W.V. Quine Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
entries
Gottlob Frege G.E. Moore Bertrand Russell Ludwig Wittgenstein Rudolf Carnap A.J. Ayer The Vienna Circle W.V. Quine |