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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analytic philosophy | 6/18 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:19:43.103246+00:00 | kb-cron |
David Lewis defended a number of elaborate metaphysical theories. In works such as On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) and Counterfactuals (1973), Lewis argued for modal realism and counterpart theory – the belief in real, concrete possible worlds, and argued against any "ersatz" conception of possibility. According to Lewis, "actual" is merely an indexical label we give a world when we are in it. Lewis applied Quine's dictum of ontological commitment to the statement "There are other ways things could have been;" committing Lewis (by his lights) to the real existence of other ways things could have been. He also defended what he called Humean supervenience, and a counterfactual theory of causation, another view of Hume's.
=== Truth === Frege questioned standard theories of truth, and sometimes advocated a deflationary, redundancy theory of truth, i. e. that the predicate "is true" does not express anything above and beyond the statement to which it is attributed. Frank Ramsey also advocated a redundancy theory.
Alfred Tarski put forward an influential semantic theory of truth, that truth is a property of sentences. Tarski's semantic methods culminated in model theory, as opposed to proof theory. In Truth-Makers (1984), Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons, and Barry Smith introduced the truth-maker idea as a contribution to the correspondence theory of truth. A truth-maker is contrasted with a truth-bearer. A truth-bearer's truth is grounded by the truth-maker.
=== Universals === In response to the problem of universals, Australian David Armstrong defended a kind of moderate realism. David Lewis and Anthony Quinton defended nominalism.
=== Mereology === Polish philosopher Stanisław Leśniewski, along with Nelson Goodman, established mereology, the formal study of parts and wholes. Mereology was originally a variant of nominalism arguing one should dispense with set theory, but the now broader subject of parts and wholes arguably goes back to the time of the pre-Socratics. David Lewis introduced the term 'atomless gunk' for something not made up of simples, which instead divides forever into smaller and smaller parts. Peter Van Inwagen believes in mereological nihilism, except for living beings, a view called organicism. According to mereological nihilism, there are no (say) chairs, just fundamental particles arranged chair-wise.
=== Personal identity === Since John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), philosophers have been concerned with the problem of personal identity. Locke thought psychological continuity or memory made one the same person over time. Bernard Williams in The Self and the Future (1970) takes the opposite view, and argues that personal identity is bodily identity rather than mental continuity. Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (1984) defends a kind of bundle theory of personal identity. Parfit issues the thought experiment of a case of fission, where one person splits into two, say surviving with half of their brain, while the other half is put into a new body. David Lewis defends perdurantism, where people are four-dimensional, so a person at any one time is only a part or slice of the whole person.
=== Free will and determinism === Peter van Inwagen's monograph An Essay on Free Will (1983) played an important role in rehabilitating libertarianism, with respect to free will, in mainstream analytic philosophy. He introduces the consequence argument and the term incompatibilism about free will and determinism, to stand in contrast to compatibilism—the view that free will is compatible with determinism. Charlie Broad had previously made similar arguments.
=== Principle of sufficient reason === Since Leibniz philosophers have discussed the principle of sufficient reason, or PSR. Van Inwagen criticizes the PSR, while Alexander Pruss defends it.
=== Philosophy of time === Analytic philosophy of time traces its roots to British idealist John McTaggart's article "The Unreality of Time" (1908). McTaggart distinguishes between the dynamic or tensed A-theory of time (past, present, future), in which time flows; and the static or tenseless B-theory of time (earlier than, simultaneous with, later than). Arthur Prior, who invented tense logic, advocated the A-theory of time. Along with David Lewis's perdurantism, the theory of special relativity seems to advocate a B-theory of time. Eternalism holds that past, present, and future are equally real. In contrast, presentism holds that only entities in the present exist. The moving spotlight theory is a kind of hybrid view where all moments exist, but only one moment is present. Growing block, advocated by Charlie Broad, holds that only the past and present exist, but the future does not (yet) exist (there is also the reverse, a shrinking block).
=== Logical pluralism === Many-valued and non-classical logics have been popular since the Polish logician Jan Łukasiewicz. Graham Priest is a dialetheist, denying the law of non-contradiction, seeing it as the most natural solution to problems such as the liar paradox. JC Beall, together with Greg Restall, is a pioneer of a widely discussed version of logical pluralism, the view that there is more than one correct logic.
== Epistemology ==
Owing largely to Edmund Gettier's paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" (1963) and the so-called Gettier problem, epistemology has since enjoyed a resurgence as a topic of analytic philosophy. Using epistemic luck, Gettier provided counterexamples to the "justified true belief" (JTB) definition of knowledge, found as early as Plato's dialogue Theaetetus. Philosophers give alternatives to the JTB account or develop theories of justification to deal with Gettier's examples. For example, Timothy Williamson argues in Knowledge and Its Limits (2000) that knowledge is sui generis and indefinable.