Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy is a way of thinking in modern Western philosophy, especially in English-speaking countries. It focuses on careful analysis, clear writing, strong arguments, logic, mathematics, and science. It also pays special attention to language and what words mean.

This style of philosophy is often different from continental philosophy, which comes from Europe and includes ideas like existentialism, phenomenology, and Hegelianism. Analytic philosophy is usually more academic and technical, while continental philosophy can be more literary.

Analytic philosophy became popular around the start of the 1900s and has been very important since the middle of that century. Key thinkers include Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Later, philosophers like Wilfrid Sellars, W. V. O. Quine, Saul Kripke, and David Lewis helped bring back ideas about the nature of reality. Analytic philosophy has also created new areas of study, such as the philosophy of language, mathematics, and science, as well as modern logic.

Austrian realism

Analytic philosophy was greatly shaped by ideas from Austria-Hungary, a country that no longer exists. Some thinkers even say it should be called Anglo-Austrian instead of Anglo-American.

One important philosopher, Franz Brentano from the University of Vienna, talked about how our thoughts are always about something. He called this "intentionality." For example, when you think about a tree, your thought is directed toward the idea of a tree. This idea of thinking about things was very important for later philosophers.

Brentano had many students, including Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong. Meinong had interesting ideas about objects that we can imagine but that don’t actually exist, like flying pigs. He believed these imagined things still have a kind of reality in our minds. Another student, Kazimierz Twardowski from Poland, focused on carefully studying small, specific problems in philosophy.

Frege

Gottlob Frege was a German professor of geometry, a logician, and a philosopher. He is known as the founder of analytic philosophy. Frege believed that arithmetic could be reduced to pure logic, agreeing with Leibniz and disagreeing with Kant about mathematics.

Frege created modern mathematical logic in his book Concept-script from 1879. He combined two old types of logic—Aristotelian and Stoic—so more sentences could be understood logically. In his work on numbers, Frege argued that math and logic deal with public objects, not private thoughts. He also influenced the study of language by suggesting that we should look at words only in the context of whole sentences.

Revolt against idealism

British philosophy in the nineteenth century saw a return to logic, starting with Richard Whately, who stood against the logic-avoiding ideas of British empiricism. A key person in this time was the mathematician George Boole. Others included William Hamilton, Augustus De Morgan, William Stanley Jevons, John Venn, Lewis Carroll, Hugh MacColl, and Charles Sanders Peirce.

Later, British philosophy was mostly about British idealism, a way of thinking based on the ideas of neo-Hegelian thinkers like F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green. Bradley’s book Appearance and Reality (1893) showed this style of thinking.

Analytic philosophy, especially in the twentieth century, began when Cambridge thinkers like Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore turned away from these complex ideas. They felt that common sense ideas were important and real. Russell said that Moore led this change, and he followed, feeling free again. They believed things like grass being green and the sun and stars existing even when no one sees them are true.

Russell and Moore also worked on ideas about how we see the world, using a theory called naïve realism and sense-data. In America, the New Realists also stood against these old ideas.

Logical atomism

A big part of the older British thinking was logical holism, the idea that we can only understand parts of the world by understanding the whole world. This was linked to the idea of internal relations, where relationships between things are seen as important parts of those things. In response, Russell and Moore suggested logical atomism, the idea that the world is made of separate facts.

Russell

In 1901, Russell found a big problem in some math rules, which changed how people thought about logic. He believed that by using clear and careful thinking, we could solve big questions. One of his famous ideas was about how we talk about things that might not exist, like saying "the present King of France" even though there isn’t one. He showed that names we use are really short ways to describe things.

Russell worked with another thinker named Whitehead on a big book called Principia Mathematica. They tried to use symbols and math to make logic very clear and avoid mistakes. They wanted to create a perfect way of talking that would help solve tricky problems by making everything very simple and exact.

Early Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein, a student of Russell, created a big idea about how language works in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus from 1921. He thought this book solved all big questions about thinking and language.

Wittgenstein said the world is everything that happens. He believed we can use special kinds of sentences to describe what happens in the world, almost like making a picture of it with words. His book talked about important ideas like truth conditions and ways to show if something is true or false. He also said some things can’t really be spoken about, only shown, and that we must stay quiet about them.

Logical positivism

During the late 1920s to 1940s, two groups of philosophers called the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle turned ideas from earlier thinkers into a belief system known as "logical positivism." The Vienna Circle was led by Moritz Schlick and included Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. The Berlin Circle was led by Hans Reichenbach and had members like Carl Hempel and mathematician David Hilbert.

Logical positivists used careful thinking and logic to study how we know things. They believed that every important idea must either come from experience or be about language itself. They thought ideas about things like religion, right and wrong, and beauty were not important for study. They also believed philosophy's job was mostly to help make ideas clearer.

Ordinary language

After World War II, a type of thinking called analytic philosophy started to focus on ordinary language. Instead of creating perfect, imaginary languages, these thinkers looked closely at how everyday language works.

There were two main ways this happened. One was linked to the ideas of a philosopher named Wittgenstein. Later in his life, Wittgenstein changed his mind about many things. He began to think that meaning comes from how we use words in real life, not from hidden rules or pictures in our minds. He used simple examples, like games, to show how words can have many related meanings without one single definition.

The other way was called Oxford philosophy. These thinkers, including Gilbert Ryle, Peter Strawson, and John L. Austin, believed that ordinary language already holds many hidden ideas that philosophers had missed. They studied how we actually use words to describe things and actions, showing that words can do more than just tell facts — they can make promises or express feelings too.

Spread to other countries

Australia and New Zealand

Samuel Alexander inspired Australian philosophy. The Australian realism school started when John Anderson became a teacher at the University of Sydney in 1927. American thinker David Lewis often visited Australia for over 30 years. In New Zealand, J. N. Findlay, who studied under Ernst Mally, taught at the University of Otago. Karl Popper also gave talks at the Canterbury University College in Christchurch.

Sweden and Finland

In Sweden, Axel Hägerström started a new way of thinking called the Uppsala School, moving away from older ideas. In Finland, Eino Kaila began what is called Finnish analytic philosophy. One of his students, Georg Henrik von Wright, took over from a famous thinker at a university in England in 1948.

China

Zhang Shenfu brought ideas from a British thinker to China and later translated an important book. In 1920, that same British thinker visited China. This started the first step in analytic philosophy there. Later, another person shared new thinking with books. During a difficult time, focus on these ideas slowed down. But after changes in the 1970s, interest in analytic philosophy in China grew again and is still getting bigger today.

Metaphysics

During the second half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy saw the end of logical positivism and a return to thinking about big questions about reality.

Wilfrid Sellars, a scholar of Kant, changed how philosophy was done in the United States. He argued against old ideas about knowledge and showed how everyday ideas and scientific ideas fit together.

W. V. O. Quine, a philosopher from Harvard, had a big effect on later philosophy. He thought philosophy was very connected to science. Quine questioned common ideas about meaning and suggested that words only make sense when we think about all our knowledge together. In his famous book Word and Object, Quine used a story about trying to understand a new language to show how hard it is to know exactly what words mean.

Saul Kripke brought back important ideas about what things are and what they could be. He showed that names mean the same thing no matter what, and that some facts are always true, like that water is made of H₂O.

David Lewis supported ideas about many possible worlds and how things might have been different. He believed that what we call “real” is just the world we are in, and that other possibilities are just as real.

Different thinkers have also talked about what makes something true, and about how we know things, with some saying that truth just means the words match the facts. Others have looked at what things share in common, like how many things can be red at once.

Philosophers have also wondered about who we are over time, with some saying it is our memories that make us who we are, and others saying it is our bodies. Still others have used imaginary stories, like one where a person splits into two, to think about these questions.

Epistemology

Because of a paper by Edmund Gettier in 1963 called "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", many people started studying knowledge again in analytic philosophy. Gettier showed that just having a true belief that is justified isn't always enough to count as knowledge. Philosophers have tried to fix this idea or make new theories to explain knowledge better.

Some philosophers, like Roderick Chisholm, believe that some basic beliefs are enough to support others. Others, like Ernest Sosa, think knowledge comes from good thinking abilities. There are also debates about whether we need to know about ourselves to know things, or if outside facts are enough. These ideas help us understand how we can really know anything.

In 1955, Nelson Goodman brought up a tricky problem about how we guess what will happen next. He used made-up words to show how our guesses can sometimes go wrong, making us think more carefully about how we use evidence.

Ethics

Early thinkers in analytic philosophy thought ethics was too unclear to study. Later, they began to look more closely at moral ideas. Today, analytic philosophers talk about ethics in three main ways.

• Meta-ethics, which looks at what words like "good" or "bad" really mean;
• Normative ethics, which tries to decide what is right or wrong;
• Applied ethics, which uses these ideas to solve real-world problems.

Meta-ethics has two big ideas. One comes from a book called Principia Ethica, which says goodness is a special, simple idea that can't be explained by science. The other idea says that when people talk about values, they are just showing their feelings, not facts.

Normative ethics looks at three main views. One is about making the most good overall. Another is about following rules, like those suggested by Kant. The third is about being the best person you can be, inspired by Aristotle.

Applied ethics uses these ideas to answer tough questions, like those raised by new technology or science. Topics include schools, the environment, animals, and medical issues.

Political philosophy

One of the most important thinkers in the philosophy of law was H. L. A. Hart, who helped create legal positivism with his book The Concept of Law in 1961. Other important writers, like Ronald Dworkin and Matthew Kramer, also added to these ideas.

During World War II, Karl Popper wrote about the idea of an open society in his book The Open Society and its Enemies. Isaiah Berlin talked about two kinds of freedom: one where you are not stopped by others and another where you can control your own life.

John Rawls wrote a famous book called A Theory of Justice in 1971. He talked about fairness and how society should treat everyone equally. He used a thought experiment called the veil of ignorance to explain his ideas. Another writer, Robert Nozick, wrote Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974, where he talked about free-market ideas and how property works.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is the study of beauty and art. For a long time, it wasn't a big part of analytic philosophy, but starting in the 1950s and 1960s, philosophers like Susanne Langer, Frank Sibley, Morris Weitz, and Nelson Goodman began to explore it.

Some philosophers, like Sibley, Weitz, and Goodman, believed that there are no fixed rules to define what art is because the idea of art can change over time. Other philosophers, like Arthur Danto and George Dickie, thought that art is defined by the art world and its institutions. Still others, like Jerrold Levinson, focused on how art has been viewed historically. Philosophers have also studied ideas about beauty and how people feel about fictional stories.

Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language studies how words and meanings work. Many important thinkers have shaped this field.

Some philosophers, like Kripke and Ruth Barcan Marcus, questioned old ideas about how names refer to things. They suggested new ways to understand meaning and reference. Others, like Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson, used clever thought experiments to show that the meaning of words depends on more than just our minds.

The study of pragmatics looks at how we use language in real situations. Paul Grice and others showed how we understand implied meanings and context when we talk.

Philosophy of mind

Analytic philosophy has become very interested in the philosophy of mind. Two important ideas in this area are intentionality and qualia, a term first used by C. I. Lewis.

Different thinkers have different views about how the mind relates to the body. Some believe that mental experiences come from complex physical processes, like how new qualities can emerge from simple parts working together. Others think that mental states are the same as specific brain states. Functionalism, which sees the mind as working like a computer, is currently the most popular view.

Some philosophers argue that mental experiences cannot be fully explained by physical processes alone. Others suggest that consciousness is a basic part of the world. Recent studies have focused on understanding consciousness and how we experience things through our senses.

Philosophy of mathematics

Kurt Gödel, a student of Hans Hahn of the Vienna Circle, created his incompleteness theorems showing that even very careful mathematical work cannot capture all of arithmetic. Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel developed Zermelo Fraenkel Set Theory, which is a key system used in modern mathematics.

Physicist Eugene Wigner wrote a famous paper titled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" in 1960, asking why math, which seems abstract, works so well in describing the real world.

The philosophy of mathematics includes many different views. Some think math exists in a world of its own, while others see it as something we create with our minds. There are also ideas about whether math can handle concepts like infinity, and how we can know mathematical truths.

Philosophy of religion

Analytic philosophy has included many different ideas and ways of thinking. Some of these ideas have been very friendly to the study of religion and helped answer questions that other types of analytic philosophy did not like to discuss.

At first, analytic philosophy mostly ignored religion, thinking it was too hard to study. But after some changes in how people thought, philosophers started to look at religion again. They looked at big questions like whether God exists, if believing in God makes sense, what miracles are, and why bad things happen.

Some Christian philosophers, like Alvin Plantinga, used analytic philosophy to support their beliefs. Plantinga wrote books arguing that belief in God is natural, like believing in other people. Other philosophers also used analytic ideas to talk about faith and God's commands.

There are also Catholic philosophers who mix analytic ideas with the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, called Analytic Thomism. Richard Swinburne, who believed in God, wrote books explaining why he thought God exists.

Some philosophers also looked at the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Søren Kierkegaard when thinking about religion.

Philosophy of science

Philosophy of science studies how science and evidence shape our understanding. Many thinkers believe in scientific realism and naturalism, meaning they trust science to describe the real world. Science has become very important in analytic philosophy, affecting ideas about time because of special relativity and discussions about free will because of quantum physics.

Different philosophers have different ideas about how science works. Some, like Karl Popper, think science is about testing ideas to see if they can be proven wrong. Others, like Thomas Kuhn, suggest that big changes in science happen when old ways of thinking are replaced by new ones. Today, philosophers also explore science in areas like physics, chemistry, and biology, especially when it comes to understanding how living things change over time.