Philosophy - Analytic

Analytic Philosophy

20th Century school of thought, rejected traditional points; contend that the entire business of philosophy is analysis, philosophy consists of linguistic activity designed to eliminate problems arising from intellectual confusion and this to clarify the knowledge which we already possess; a non-metaphysical school of thought; a reaction against Idealism.

G. E. Moore - method of posing questions or problems to be analyzed, instead of postulating answers and solutions.

Most difficulties in philosophy are caused by “the attempt to answer questions without first discovering what question it is which you desire to answer”

- the task is to analyze and clarify ordinary language.

- the search for truth and discovery was replaced by the search for meaning and clarification and the examination of language.

Bertrand Russell - founded logical atomism, theory that the world consists of a number of simple facts, each independent of all the others yet related externally to the others.

Not facts, but propositions are true or false; proportions are symbols, not facts.

Ludwig Wittgenstein - in his later life he broke away from previous thinking (picture theory: basic analytic philosophy) and expounded a language-games theory.

Tractatus - a proposition is a picture of reality...a picture is a model of reality...a picture is a fact...the world is the totality of facts...the totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world; thus language is a picture of reality.

Later life - emphasised that the way in which a word is used, not its meaning as a name for some object, gives language and statements their validity.

John Wisdom - philosophy is essentially therapeutic activity designed to clarify the uses of language.

- philosophers present us with old facts in anew light, but do not discover new facts.

Oxford Philosophy - incorrect use of ordinary English is responsible for philosophical problems, and these can be solved only by “pointing” out the normal usage of the words employed and the normal grammatical form of the sentence in which they appear.  Ordinary language is correct language.

- concerned with the “elucidation of concepts” and the “logic of expressions”; dualism is the “dogma of the Ghost in the machine.”