The Twentieth Century: Quine and After (Central Works of Philosophy, Vol. 5)

345 Pages·2006·3.14 MB·English

by  John Shand (editor)

Central Works of Philosophy
Central Works of Philosophy is a multi-volume set of essays on the core texts of
the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato’s Republic to the present day,
the volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing, covering the best,
most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philoso-
phers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview
of the work and clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas. Together
these essays introduce the masterpieces of the Western philosophical canon and
provide an unrivalled companion for reading and studying philosophy.
Central Works of Philosophy
Edited by John Shand
Volume 1: Ancient and Medieval
Volume 2: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Volume 3: The Nineteenth Century
Volume 4: The Twentieth Century: Moore to Popper
Volume 5: The Twentieth Century: Quine and After
Central Works of Philosophy Volume 5
The Twentieth Century: Quine and After
Edited by John Shand
In memory of my parents, Alexander Hesketh Shand and Muriel Olive Shand
© Editorial matter and selection, 2006 John Shand. Individual contributions,
the contributors.
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2006 by Acumen
Acumen Publishing Limited
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East Street
Chesham
Bucks HP5 1HQ
www.acumenpublishing.co.uk
ISBN-10 1-84465-020-0 (hardcover)
ISBN-13 978-1-84465-020-0 (hardcover)
ISBN-10 1-84465-021-9 (paperback)
ISBN-13 978-1-84465-021-7 (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Designed and typeset in Garamond by Kate Williams, Swansea.
Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenberg Press.
Contents

Contributors vii
Preface xi
The Twentieth Century: Quine and After: Introduction 1
John Shand
1. W. V. Quine: Word and Object 15
Gary Kemp
2. P. F. Strawson: Individuals 40
Paul Snowdon
3. John Rawls: A Theory of Justice 64
Anthony Simon Laden
4. Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State, and Utopia 86
Peter Vallentyne
5. Michael Dummett: Truth and Other Enigmas 104
Bernhard Weiss
6. Richard Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 126
Alan Malachowski
7. Donald Davidson: Essays on Actions and Events 146
Kirk Ludwig
8. Saul Kripke: Naming and Necessity 166
John P. Burgess
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CONTENTS
9. Hilary Putnam: Reason, Truth and History 187
Peter Clark
10. Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 207
A. W. Moore
11. Thomas Nagel: The View From Nowhere 227
Anita Avramides
12. David Lewis: On the Plurality of Worlds 246
Phillip Bricker
13. Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self 268
Ruth Abbey
14. John McDowell: Mind and World 291
Tim Thornton
Index 317
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Contributors

Ruth Abbey is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre
Dame. She is the author of Charles Taylor (Acumen), editor of Contemporary
Philosophy in Focus: Charles Taylor and the author of Nietzsche’s Middle Period.
Anita Avramides is the Southover Manor Trust Fellow in Philosophy at St
Hilda’s College, Oxford. She works on philosophy of language, philosophy of
mind, epistemology and metaphysics. She is the author of Meaning and Mind: A
Gricean Account of Language and Other Minds, and editor of Women of Ideas.
Phillip Bricker is Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Massa-
chusetts, Amherst. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on possible worlds under
the direction of David Lewis. He previously held positions at the University of
Notre Dame and Yale University.
John P. Burgess has taught since 1976 at Princeton University, where he is now
Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies. He is the author of A Subject
with No Object (with Gideon Rosen), Fixing Frege and many papers in logic and
philosophy of mathematics. His other philosophical interests include metaeth-
ics and ’pataphysics.
Peter Clark is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University
of St Andrews. He works primarily in the philosophy of physical sciences and
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CONTRIBUTORS
mathematics and was Editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
1999–2005.
Gary Kemp is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.
He has written on various aspects of the philosophy of logic and language and
logic, the history of analytical philosophy, Quine and Davidson.
Anthony Simon Laden is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of Reasonably Radical: Deliberative Lib-
eralism and the Politics of Identity as well as numerous articles on democracy,
deliberation and the work of John Rawls.
Kirk Ludwig is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. He works
in epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind and action.
He is editor of Donald Davidson, and co-author with Ernest Lepore of Donald
Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality and Donald Davidson: Truth-
theoretic Semantics.
Alan Malachowski is Honorary Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
East Anglia. He is the author of Richard Rorty (Acumen) and editor of Reading
Rorty.
A. W. Moore is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a
Fellow of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. His publications include The Infinite;
Points of View; and Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations
in Kant’s Moral and Religious Philosophy and he is editor of Philosophy as a
Humanistic Discipline, a collection of essays by Bernard Williams. He is one of
Bernard Williams’s literary executors.
John Shand studied philosophy at the University of Manchester and King’s
College, Cambridge. He is an Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at The Open
University and is the author of Arguing Well and Philosophy and Philosophers:
An Introduction to Western Philosophy (second edition, Acumen) and editor of
Fundamentals of Philosophy.
Paul Snowdon is Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College
London. Before that, until 2001, he was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He
has written mainly about perception and personal identity, but also about issues
in the philosophy of P. F. Strawson, who was one of his tutors.
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
Tim Thornton is Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health at the University
of Central Lancashire. His research interests include philosophy of psychia-
try and philosophy of thought and language. He is the author of Wittgenstein
on Language and Thought and John McDowell (Acumen) and co-author of the
Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry.
Peter Vallentyne is Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Missouri-Columbia. He writes on issues of liberty and equality, and left-
libertarianism in particular. He edited Equality and Justice and Contractarianism
and Rational Choice and coedited (with Hillel Steiner) The Origins of Left Liber-
tarianism and Left Libertarianism and Its Critics.
Bernhard Weiss is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cape
Town. He has published a number of papers on anti-realism in the philosophies
of language and mathematics and is author of Michael Dummett (Acumen).
ix