Analytic Philosophy

Decription

This course seeks to introduce students to analytic philosophy. Students will be taken through some attempts at defining what analytic philosophy is, in particular how analytic philosophy understands philosophical problems and its own suggestions at approaching those problems. Then students will be led through an example of a debate in analytic philosophy. We will look at Strawson’s paper on referring and Russell’s response to it. The rest of the course will look at various topics considered proper to analytic philosophy.

Table of contents

1. The Main Split in Contemporary Philosophy

2. Analytical Philosophy

3. The Linguistic Turn

4. Truth and Meaning

5. Analytic philosophy: what, whence, and whither?

6. Analysis in analytic philosophy

7. The Value of Philosophy

8. The Province of Philosophy

9. On Referrin

10. M. Strawson on Referring

11. Counterfactuals and Causal Laws

12. Some Remarks about the Senses

13. Brains and Behaviour

14. Modality and Quantification

15. Verifiability and the Elimination of Metaphysics

16. The Principle of Verifiability