ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHYa trend in contemporary philosophy with its own distinct

methodology and content. It began in Great Britain at the beginning of the

twentieth century (G. E. Moore, B. Russell) in opposition to speculative idealistic
philosophy. Several variations of analytic philosophy developed primarily in
countries where English is the primary language (esp. in the United States and
Australia). The precursors of the trend include G. Frege and, in part, F. Brentano.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. In its first phase, analytic philosophy
was a form of opposition to neo-Hegelian metaphysics, which was cultivated in
England by F. H. Bradley, J. M. McTaggart, and others. Both Moore and Russell
disagreed with the idealism and the method of this form of metaphysics. Moore
thought that up to that time philosophers had not put sufficient weight on precision
in the formulation of theses or on the exact definition of the meaning of the terms
they used. This negligence led them to make absurd statements at odds with
common sense. Although the detailed analysis of concepts is not the ultimate end
of philosophy, it should be an introductory step in any well-ordered philosophy.
According to Russell, when philosophers considered a proposition, they too often
took its grammatical form to be the same as its logical form. In order to show
explicitly the logical form, we must translate the proposition from ordinary language
into a proposition expressed in the categories of contemporary formal logic. This
theory of description is an example of this kind of analysis. This theory provided a
way to avoid certain paradoxes associated with references to non-existent objects.
This method of analysis ultimately led Russell to think that artificial formal
languages are closer to reality than is ordinary language. This idea marked the
beginning of a form of analytic philosophy called the philosophy of ideal language. It
included the logical atomism of B. Russell and L. Wittgenstein, and neopositivism
which was started by the Vienna Circle (M. Schlick, R. Carnap, O. Neurath).
According to logical positivism, the structure of reality is adequately reflected by the
language of contemporary logic (or more precisely, logic in the form in which it
appears in B. Russells Principia Mathematica). The world is composed of atomic
facts which are ontologically independent of one another; in an ideal logical
language, atomic propositions which are independent of each other in content
would correspond to these facts. Composite facts are the models for composite
propositions, which are built from simple atomic propositions with the help of truth
functors.
L. Wittgensteins logical atomism as presented in his work Tractatus logicophilosophicus (1921) was connected with a metaphilosophy in which true
propositions are formulated only in the natural sciences. Philosophy is not one of the
natural sciences but an activity aimed at the clarification of thought. Moreover, the
source of questions and theses in philosophy up to that time was a
misunderstanding of the logic of our language. The members of the Vienna Circle
referred to this metaphilosophy (or at least to a certain interpretation of it). They
accepted the verification theory of meaning (the meaning of a proposition is the
method whereby it is empirically verified), and they held that traditional philosophy
is simply a collection of meaningless propositions. Philosophy has nothing to say
about reality (all knowledge about the world is contained in the natural sciences).

The basic task of philosophy is the logical analysis of scientific language or the
logical structure of scientific theories. The Vienna Circle, together with a group of
thinkers concentrated around H. Reichenbach in Berlin, started neopositivism (also
referred to as logical positivism or logical empiricism). It was popularized in England
by J. Ayer and later took root in the United States.
Although logical positivism was an integral part of analytic philosophy, it took shape
independently of its British stem. This was the case with the Polish school of analytic
philosophy started by F. Brentano&s student, K. Twardowski. His program of
philosophy was similar to Moores: philosophys first tasks was to present problems
and the terms used in precise terms. Most of the representatives of this school
(including K. Ajdukiewicz, S. Leniewski, J. ukasiewicz, and A. Tarski) were inclined
to think that the tools of formal logic were best suited for the purpose of increasing
precision. This idea brought the Polish school of analytic philosophy close to the
philosophy of ideal language in many respects. The Polish analytic philosophers
differed from the neopositivists because they had a more moderate approach to the
problems and solutions of traditional philosophy: they treated these problems with
reserve, but they did not regarded them merely as a collection of meaningless
statements.
After 1930, when Wittgenstein was without doubt the most important analytic
philosopher, his thought underwent a great change. While he remained faithful to
the idea that the problems and philosophical theses up to that time arose from a
misunderstanding of the logic of our language, he didn't think that this logic was
identical to formal logic. The real language we use is a collection of various
language games governed by their own rules and their own logic. Any attempt to
enclose this variety in one logical system would necessarily introduce essential
distortions. The task of the analytic philosopher is not to reform language, but to
describe particular language games. The purpose was not so much to construct a
systematic theory of language as to show that the traditional problems in
philosophy resulted from an ignorance of the specific character of these language
games. Philosophical analysis is primarily therapeutic since it is not concerned with
solving philosophical problems but with removing them (the philosopher is
occupied with a problem as a physician is occupied with an illness). Some of
Wittgensteins disciples (including J. Wisdom in England and M. Lazerowitz in the
USA) emphasized and developed the therapeutic dimension of philosophy.
Because of his positive views on language, Wittgenstein came to be regarded as a
representative of the philosophy of ordinary language. This group also included a
group of Oxford philosophers (J. L. Austin, G. Ryle, and in part H. P. Grice and P. F.
Strawson). They were joined in the idea that ordinary language has its own coherent
logic, and this logic cannot be fully comprehended by any formal system. Both in
removing illusory philosophical problems and in solving real problems we abide by
this logic and we should not despise the distinctions suggested by ordinary
(customary) language. We should be on the guard against far-reaching
generalizations and we should avoid simplistic and dichotomous classifications. The
philosophy of ordinary language was developed mainly in Great Britain, but its
influence began to decline after 1960.

In the United States, W. V. Quine became the main figure in analytic philosophy after
the Second World War. On the one hand, Quine criticized the dogmatic
presuppositions of logical positivism (the dichotomous classification of sentences as
analytic and synthetic, and the idea that all scientific propositions could be reduced
to propositions of perception). On the other hand, Quine carried forward many ideas
of the movement (e.g., there is no first philosophy independent of the sciences;
there is a continuum between philosophy and science in the sense that philosophy
is located at the theoretical and conceptual outer boundary of science, analyzes the
key terms of science, and establishes the ontological binding authority of scientific
theories).
At the end of the 1960s some philosophers began to try constructing a systematic
theory of meaning for natural languages, and on the basis of such a theory to
formulate specific metaphysical statements. This means that the more powerful
theses of the analytic philosophers who had gone before, that the analysis of
language enables us to avoid or resolve traditional philosophical problems, was
replaced by the weaker thesis, that the philosophy of language is the central
philosophical discipline and that its conclusions have an essential influence on the
shape of philosophy as a whole. D. Davision and M. Dummett developed theories of
meaning along these lines. The central idea in Davidsons conception is that the
meaning of a proposition is equivalent to the conditions of its truth, namely the
conditions whose occurrence makes the proposition true. An analysis of the truth
conditions requires that in the case of many propositions we must recognize events
as a category just as central as that of substances or properties. Dummett and
those who continued his work (e.g., C. Wright) are firmly opposed to describing the
meaning of propositions in this way, since in many cases we cannot recognize
whether the truth conditions have occurred, which would lead to the conclusion that
we do not know the meaning of many of the propositions we frequently use. The
meaning of a propositions is rather the conditions for its verification, its rational
justification, or more generally, its assertability. This position, however, may have
rather unexpected antirealistic (or even idealistic) consequences concerning the
existence and character of the reality that is independent of us.
In the 1970s following the work of S. A. Kripke and H. Putnam, analytic philosophers
formulated a new theory of designation (reference) which based designation on the
causal connection between the users of a language and the objects designated, and
which postulated the existence of the essences of things or natural kinds. This was
one of the factors which contributed to a renewed interest in the question of
metaphysical necessity and the ontology of possible worlds.
Starting in the 1980s, the philosophy of language began to lose its central position
to the philosophy of thought. This was influenced by internal aspects of analytic
philosophy (the idea that we cannot understand how language functions or how it is
related to reality without understanding the nature of the mind and its connections
with the world), and by external factors (the rapid development of the sciences with
respect to the brain and cognitive processes). Although there are more than a dozen
competing theories of the mind, the major philosophers who work in this field

(including D. C. Dennet, J. A. Fodor, and J. R. Searle) adhere to naturalism or

physicalism in one form or another.
If we look in very general terms at the history of analytic philosophy in the twentieth
century and leave to the side many of its secondary and uncharacteristic branches,
we may say that after its initial period there were three basic trends within it: the
linguistic, ontological, and naturalistic trend.
THE METHODS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY are a system of operations generally
recognized as rational: the collection of the data of experience, the theoretical
description of the elements of linguistic competence, linguistic interpretation, the
interpretation of the findings of the particular sciences, reasoning, and thought
experiments. In analytic methods the use of controversial sources of knowledge is
avoided (e.g., intellectual intuition), and a greater emphasis is placed on
argumentation and discourse than on inspection or intuition. It is generally accepted
that these methods provide temporary results that may be invalidated by further
analyses.
The classical conceptual analysis has a definitional character: for a given concept of
system of concepts, equivalent concepts with a clearer and simpler content are
given. Classical conceptual analysis often is reductive since it tries to reduce the
concepts being analyzed to simple and elementary concepts; most often its results
are formulated in necessary categories that satisfy the conditions for applying a
certain concept. Analysis of this kind must contend with many difficulties (known as
the paradoxes of analysis).
Constructive analysis is an attempt to grasp the meaning of a concept and its
connections with other concepts by establishing their correspondence with a system
of logic or by constructing a new formal system (e.g., modal logic for the concepts
of necessity and possibility). The method for establishing this ordering and for
establishing the principle of selection among competing logical systems gives rise
here to the most difficulties.
Descriptive analysis consists in a detailed description of the way linguistic
expressions are used. In order to be philosophically relevant, it must go beyond
merely presenting instances of the use of language and must acquire a normative
dimension (it must provide grounds for stating which use of language is correct and
why). In this method the quest for necessary and sufficient conditions is abandoned,
and the demand that some concepts should be reduced to other concepts is
replaced by the weaker requirement to show the connections between concepts
(connective analysis).
Transcendental analysisis a search for the epistemological and metaphysical
conditions for the application or occurrence of a fundamental concept, distinction,
or fact. It is a distant echo of Kants transcendental philosophy. It is often applied in
discussion with various forms of skepticism. Its scope and conclusive power is a
topic of discussion.

Imaginative analysis takes the form of imagining or presenting to ourselves how we

would apply our concepts, categories, and distinctions in situations other than those
we know from the real world. It seems to be an attractive method for establishing
stable and non-contingent connections and for finding different counter-examples
for existing conclusions. The use of imaginative analysis to establish metaphysical
theses requires us to presuppose that it is valid to make inferences from what is
conceivable (or inconceivable) to what is metaphysically possible (or impossible).
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND OTHER CONTEMPORARY SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY. It is
hard to establish how analytic philosophy is related to other schools because of its
diversity and the changes it has undergone during its history. As a result, if we try to
find one adequate definition of analytic philosophy as a whole, the definition will be
too general and will not help us in locating it as a branch of contemporary
philosophy (as an example we may mention Davidsons definition: analytic
philosophy is neither a method, nor a doctrine, it is a tradition and an attitude).
It is more helpful to consider that which stands in opposition to what is called
analytic philosophy. At the beginning, the opposition was ideal speculative
philosophy, later it was systematic and metaphysical philosophy, and most recently
it has been continental philosophy (which includes the traditions of phenomenology,
existentialism,
hermeneutic
philosophy,
philosophy
of
dialogue,
and
postmodernism). This is an indication of how the concept of analytic philosophy has
changed.
Although the last opposition suggests that analytic philosophy stands in opposition
to phenomenology, there is a very complex set of relations between the two. Both
to some degree have a common source in the philosophy of F. Brentano, and there
are many similarities between descriptive analyses in phenomenology and analytic
philosophy. It is significant that analytic philosophers today commonly reject the
dogma of their predecessors that language comes first before thought in
explanation, but on the other hand, for many naturalistic analytic philosophers
phenomenology is only a systematic expression of a pre-scientific popular way of
seeing the world. There is a firm opposition between analytic philosophy and some
other currents of continental philosophy, i.e., existentialism, hermeneutics, the
philosophy of dialogue, and postmodernism (together with deconstructionism).
Analytic philosophy gladly refers to certain currents of American pragmatism
(Quine, and later Putnam, one of the opponents of the naturalistic trend in analytic
philosophy). There have also been attempts to connect pragmatic ideas with
postmodernism, as well as critiques of analytic philosophy from the postmodernist
point of view (R. Rorty).
Some modern metaphysical trends such as process philosophy are opposed to
analytic philosophy. Within neo-Thomistic metaphysics there are various attitudes
toward analytic philosophy, ranging from explicit opposition in the case of logical
positivism to attempts at employing the logical methods of analytic philosophy and
bringing precision to metaphysics (in Polish philosophy, J. Salamucha, J. M. Bochski,
S. Kamiski). Neo-thomism and analytic philosophy, however, are only peripherally
connected. On the one hand, many analytic philosophers do not know enough about

scholastic philosophy, and they rarely refer to scholastic philosophical terminology,

and on the other hand neo-Thomists are not well-versed in the discussions of
analytic philosophers.
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NATURE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

Analytic philosophers conduct conceptual investigations that characteristically,
though not invariably, involve studies of the language in which the concepts in
question are, or can be, expressed. According to one tradition in analytic philosophy
(sometimes referred to as formalism), for example, the definition of a concept can
be determined by uncovering the underlying logical structures, or logical forms, of
the sentences used to express it. A perspicuous representation of these structures
in the language of modern symbolic logic, so the formalists thought, would make
clear the logically permissible inferences to and from such sentences and thereby
establish the logical boundaries of the concept under study. Another tradition,
sometimes referred to as informalism, similarly turned to the sentences in which the
concept was expressed but instead emphasized their diverse uses in ordinary
language and everyday situations, the idea being to elucidate the concept by noting
how its various features are reflected in how people actually talk and act. Even
among analytic philosophers whose approaches were not essentially either formalist
or informalist, philosophical problems were often conceived of as problems about
the nature of language. An influential debate in analytic ethics, for example,
concerned the question of whether sentences that express moral judgments (e.g.,
It is wrong to tell a lie) are descriptions of some feature of the world, in which
case the sentences can be true or false, or are merely expressions of the subjects
feelingscomparable to shouts of Bravo! or Boo!in which case they have
no truth-value at all. Thus, in this debate the philosophical problem of the nature of
right and wrong was treated as a problem about the logical or grammatical status of
moral statements.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/analytic-philosophy

logical positivism, also called logical empiricism, a philosophical movement that

arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view that scientific
knowledge
is
the
only
kind
of
factual
knowledge
and
that
all
traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless. A brief
treatment of logical positivism follows. For full treatment, see positivism: Logical
positivism and logical empiricism.

Logical positivism differs from earlier forms of empiricism and positivism(e.g., that
of David Hume and Ernst Mach) in holding that the ultimate basis of knowledge
rests upon public experimental verification or confirmation rather than upon
personal experience. It differs from the philosophies of Auguste Comte and John
Stuart Mill in holding that metaphysical doctrines are not false but meaningless
that the great unanswerable questions about substance, causality, freedom, and
God are unanswerable just because they are not genuine questions at all. This last
is a thesis about language, not about nature, and is based upon a general account
of meaning and of meaninglessness. All genuine philosophy (according to the group
that came to be called the Vienna Circle) is a critique of language, and (according to
some of its leading members) its result is to show the unity of sciencethat all
genuine knowledge about nature can be expressed in a single language common to
all the sciences.

The Vienna Circle, which produced its first manifesto in 1929, had its origin in
discussions among physicists and mathematicians before World War I. The general
conclusion was reached that the empiricism of Mill and Mach was inadequate,
because it failed to explain mathematical and logical truths and because it did not
account satisfactorily for the apparently a priori element in natural science. In
1922 Hans Hahn, one of the leaders of the Vienna Circle, laid before his students at
the University of Vienna the Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921; Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, 1922) of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This work introduced a new
general theory of meaningderived in part from the logical inquiries of Giuseppe
Peano, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whiteheadand gave the
Vienna group its logical foundation. Most of the groups members moved to
the United States at the outset of World War II. In the meantime, disciples had
arisen in many other countries: in Poland, among the mathematical logicians; and in
England, where A.J. Ayers Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) provided an excellent
introduction to the views of the group. Interest in logical positivism began to wane
in the 1950s, and by 1970 it had ceased to exist as a distinct philosophical
movement.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/logical-positivism

Logical Atomism
Russell himself went on to apply analytic methods to discussion of
basic epistemological andmetaphysical issues. In "On the Relations of Universals
and Particulars" (1911), for example, Russell used logical arguments to resolve the
ancient problem of universals. Ordinary language certainly permits the attribution of
a common predicate to more than one subject: " a is P " and " b is P " may both be
true. If only particular things exist, then a and b would be distinct, featureless
beings whose likeness with respect to P could only be understood as a sharedand
hence universalproperty. If only universal things exist, then P would exist in two
places at once, which would fail to account for the distinctness of a and b. Thus,

Russell argued, both universals and bare particulars exist; only a robust realism can
explain both the sameness and the diversity that we observe in ordinary
experience.
More generally, Russell's lectures on Our Knowledge of the External World (1914)
and Logical Atomism (1918) offered a comprehensive view of reality and our
knowledge of it. As an empiricist, Russell assumed that all human knowledge must
begin with sensory experience. Sense-data provide the primitive content of our
experience, and for Russell (unlike the phenomenalists) these sense-data are not
merely mental events, but rather the physical effects caused in us by external
objects. Although each occurs immediately within the private space of an individual
perceiver, he argued, classes of similar sense-data in various perceivers constitute a
public space from which even unperceived (though in principle perceivable)
sensibilia may be said to occur. Thus, the contents of sensory experience are both
public and objective.
From this beginning, according to Russell, all else follows by logical analysis. Simple
observations involving sense-data, such as "This patch is now green," are
the atomic facts upon which all human knowledge is grounded. What we ordinarily
call physical objects are definite descriptions constructed logically out of just such
epistemic atoms. As Russell claimed in the fifth chapter of The Problems of
Philosophy (1912),
Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of
constituents with which we are acquainted.
Careful application of this principle, together with the techniques of logical analysis,
accounts for everything we can know either by acquaintance or by description.
Some cases do call for special treatment. Russell feared that some "negative facts"
might require lengthy analysis in order to establish their ground without presuming
acquaintance with non-existence objects. "General facts" certainly do presume
something more than a collection of atomic facts. The truth of "All dogs are
mammals," for example, depends not only on the truth of many propositions
"Houston is a mammal," "Chlo is a mammal," etc.about individual dogs, but
also on the further assertion that these individuals constitute the entire extension of
the term "dog." Suitably analyzed, however, all of human knowledge can be seen to
rest solely upon the collective content of human experience.
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