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Philosophy in the Twentieth Century V655 PDF

299 Pages·1983·15.055 MB·English
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Philosophy in th e Twentieth “Not only an illuminating chronicle of some of the key debates in modem philosophy. It is itself a substantial contribution to those debates.” -Alasdair MacIntyre New York Times Book Review A.J. Ayer Philosophy in the Twentieth Century PHILOSOPHY in the TWENTIETH CENTURY ----------------------------------------- A .J Ayer VINTAGE BOOKS A Division of Random House New York First Mntage Books Edition, January 1984 Copyright © 1982 by A. J. Ayer All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Tbronto. Originally published in the United Sutes by Random House, Inc. and in Great Britain by Wcidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. in 1982. Library of Congress CaUloging in Publication DaU Ayer, A. J. (Allied Jules), 1910- Philosophy in the twentieth century. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophy, Modem—20th century. I. Title. rt04.A8i81984 I90'.9'04 83-47822 b»n 0-394-71655-8 Manufactured in the United Sutes of America To Vanessa Contents Preface ix I Philosophical Inheritance i II The Revolt From Hegel 19 Bertrand Russell 20 His Approach to Philosophy 22 The Theory of Descriptions and the Theory of Types 25 His Theories of Knowledge and of What There Is 31 G. E. Moore 4° Principia Ethica 41 Moore and Prichard 48 The Refutation of Idealism 55 The Defence of Common Sense 59 EH Pragmatism 69 William James 69 The Character of James's Pragmatism 70 Radical Empiricism 75 James's Theory of Truth 79 C. 1. Lewis 83 His Theories of Knowledge and Meaning 84 His Moral Philosophy 102 IV IV Wittgenstein, Popper and the Vienna Circle 108 The Tractatus and its Sequels 108 Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap 121 Karl Popper on Induction 131 CONTENTS The Concentration on Syntax 134 Tarski’s Theory of Truth 136 The Fate of the Circle 138 V Wittgenstein, Carnap and Ryle 142 The later Wittgenstein 142 Carnap and Semantics 137 Gilbert Ryle and the Concept of Mind 164 VI Physfealism 170 Broad on Mind and Matter 3 170 Strawson’s Concept of a Person 178 Armstrong’s Materialism 180 Davidson’s Argument 187 Summary 189 VII The Philosophy of R. G. Coliingwood 191 The Influence of Croce 192 The Theory of Absolute Presuppositions 197 Causality and the Idea of Nature 20s The Idea of History 209 VIII Phenomenology and Existentialism 214 The Foundation in Brentano and Husserl 214 Maurice Merleau-Ponty 216 His Account of Perception 216 On the World as Perceived 223 The Early Work of Heidegger and Sartre 226 IX Later Developments 234 Linguistic Philosophy . 234 J. L. Austin 234 Noam Chomsky 239 W. V. Quine 242 Nelson Goodman 253 Michael Dummett 262 Essentialism 267 Index 271 Preface 3 0 — This contribution to the history of philosophy was originally con­ ceived as a sequel to Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. It fulfils this intention to the extent that it also confines itself to the West, that, apart from a revaluation of William James and a considerably expanded treatment of what Russell called Logical Analysis, including a chapter devoted to Russell himself, it takes up the story at the point where he left off, and that rather than mention a whole host of philosophers who have made some contribution to the subject, and devote a few lines to each, it deals with the work of a relatively small number of outstanding philosophers at some depth. There is, however, one area in which I have deliberately failed to follow Russell’s example. It seemed to me that his excursions into social and political history did not throw much light upon the views of the philosophers with which he sought to associate them and I did not believe that I could improve on his performance. I have, therefore, been content to give a few biographical details about the philosophers on whom I concentrate and in certain cases to refer to the ways in which they influenced one another. It will be seen that the greater part of the book is devoted to the representatives of two main schools for which I have a personal predilection, the American pragmatists, ranging from William James and C. I. Lewis in the earlier part of this century to my near contemporaries Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine, and what is loosely called the analytic movement, covering philosophers as diverse as Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap and other members of the Vienna Circle, C. D. Broad, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, the Americans Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam, the Australian D. M. Armstrong, and, among my more recent colleagues at Oxford, Peter Strawson and Michael Dummett. I am not sure that Broad would have been pleased to find IX

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