Study Unit 4

The rise of science: The

linguistic turn
 What is analytic philosophy?
Definition
SEE THE SA PHIL GLOSSARY- http://saphilglossary.com/
• Analytic philosophy, also called linguistic philosophy, a loosely related set of
approaches to philosophical problems, dominant in Anglo-American philosophy
from the early 20th century, that emphasizes the study of language and the logical
analysis of concepts.
• Analytic philosophy is characterized by an emphasis on language, known as the 
linguistic turn, and for its clarity and rigor in arguments, making use of formal logic
 and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences.
 Historical Background
• The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during
the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the
focusing of philosophy and the other humanities primarily on the relations
between language, language users, and the world.

• The history of analytic philosophy is usually thought to begin with the

rejection of British idealism, a neo-Hegelian movement.
 What is analytic philosophy?
• Analytic philosophy is not a body of doctrine.
• It is a style of philosophizing, directed at a recognizable set of core concerns.
• Not really a new style.
• The only new aspect, is the employment of tools drawn from the new logic that
Frege, Russell, and others developed on either side of the turn of the twentieth
century.
 How analytic philosophy is used?
• Analytic philosophers;
• seeking clarity and precision
• clarify concepts and their relations to each other
• Use new logical tools
• are attentive to ideas from science that can illuminate philosophical
problems.
• emphasize detail over ‘big picture’ accounts of what they study.
 How analytic philosophy is used
• Truth, meaning, knowledge, the nature of mind, the concepts of ethics – are of
course not new to philosophy.
• But have been central to it throughout its history.
• What is new (in AP) is what the emphasis on detail, and the improved tools of
logic, have enabled philosophers to achieve in dealing with them.
• The best explanation one can give of Analytic philosophy is to show an
example of it at work.
 Analytic philosophy in context
• Analytic philosophy theory- A ‘paradigm of philosophy’ by Frank Ramsey
• Advanced by The chief founder of Analytic philosophy- Bertrand Russell.
• The theory is that if you analyse the underlying structure of things we say, using
logic to make that structure completely explicit, you will be able to solve a number
of important philosophical problems.
• See the example of John Locke on pgs 339-341 NB.
• Bertrand Russell was persuaded by the idea that meaning is denotation, and at first
thought that this meant we have to swallow the idea of subsisting entities.
Bertrand Russell
 RUSSELL (1872–1970)
• He wrote both technical and ‘popular’ books.
• He was amazingly active and lived a vigorous life.
• Was arrested and the older he grew the more radical he became.
• The founding impulse Russell gave to Analytic philosophy was aided by his
younger contemporary at Cambridge, G. E. Moore.
• He abandoned the Hegelian idealism.
• He decided that understanding the nature of the Absolute could and should be
achieved from the perspective of science.
 RUSSELL (1872–1970)
• During the time of studying philosophy, he became a neo-Hegelian for a while.
• As a philosopher, his own inspiration was quite different: it was a sense of
wonder that such silly things could be said by philosophers.
• Russell and Moore rejected neo-Hegelianism’s key doctrines of monism and
idealism in preference for pluralism and realism.
• During this process they became committed to the idea that the right method in
philosophy is the analysis of judgments or propositions which, in Moore’s view,
exist independently of acts of judging them, and which consist of complexes of
concepts.
 RUSSELL (1872–1970)
• Russell believes that logic can be just such a language
• Logicism was motivated by the desire to solve two large puzzles
• about mathematics, one epistemological, the other metaphysical.
• The epistemological puzzle is: What justifies us in claiming to know
mathematical truths such as 1 + 1 = 2?
• The metaphysical puzzle is, What are the entities or objects referred to in
mathematics?
• The puzzles connect: we would be justified in claiming to know that 1 + 1 = 2
only if we know what ‘1’ and ‘2’ are, together with how we understand ‘+’ and
‘=’.
RUSSELL (1872–1970)
• FREGE (1848–1925)- influenced Russell
• MOORE (1873–1958)- Was a student with Russell, younger than Russell

Read this additional source on Russell’s work in analytic philosophy.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/
Ludwig Wittgenstein
WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951): THE EARLY
PHILOSOPHY
• Influenced by Russell
• From a religious family- retained an interest in religion, albeit an unorthodox one,
all his life.
• Regarded him as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.
• Was interested in the question of foundations of mathematics and was
recommended Russell’s Principles of Mathematics.
• This book had a revolutionary effect on him.
• Devoted himself to the study of logic
 WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951): THE EARLY PHILOSOPHY
• The Tractatus was the only book Wittgenstein published
• Wittgenstein’s aim in the Tractatus was to show that the problems of philosophy can be solved
by understanding how language works, and that we do this latter by understanding what Frege
and Russell had sought to identify as ‘the logic of our language’.
• The problems of philosophy to be solved by understanding ‘the logic of language’ are the
traditional ones of knowledge, mind, existence, reality, truth and value.
• The solution to them, in Wittgenstein’s view, is achieved not by tackling the problems
themselves, but by showing that they are actually non-problems arising from misunderstanding
of language; a correct account of how language works therefore lays an axe to the root of the
problem.
 WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951): THE EARLY PHILOSOPHY
• Language has an underlying structure, inspection of which shows what can be meaningfully
said.
• For Wittgenstein what can be said is the same as what can be thought, so once one has
shown what can meaningfully be said, one has shown the limits of thought.
• Beyond these limits language and thought are meaningless.
• Traditional philosophical problems arise, as the result of trying to say the unsayable and think
the unthinkable
• “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about, we must consign
to silence”
• “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent”.
 WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951): THE EARLY PHILOSOPHY
• The main point [of the Tractatus] is the theory of what can be expressed by propositions – i.e.
by language – (and, which comes to the same thing, what can be thought), and what cannot be
expressed by propositions, but only shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of
philosophy.’
• Both language and the world have structure.
• Language consists of propositions, which are compounds of ‘elementary propositions’, which in
turn are combinations of ‘names’.
• Names are the ultimate constituents of language.
• Correspondingly, the world consists of the totality of facts, which are compounded out of ‘states
of affairs’, which in turn are combinations of ‘objects’.