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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analytic philosophy | 4/18 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:19:43.103246+00:00 | kb-cron |
==== Ramsey ==== The criticisms of Frank Ramsey on the "color-exclusion problem" led to some of Wittgenstein's first doubts with regard to his early philosophy. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus thought the only necessity is logical necessity; yet that no point in space can have two different colors at the same time seems a necessary truth but not a logical one. Wittgenstein responded to Ramsey in "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929), the only academic paper he ever published. Ramsey died of jaundice the next year at the age of 26.
==== Sraffa's gesture ==== Norman Malcolm also famously credits Piero Sraffa for providing Wittgenstein with the conceptual break from his earlier philosophy, by means of a rude gesture:Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and what it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the fingertips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?' Prior to the publication of the Philosophical Investigations, philosophers like John Wisdom and Rush Rhees were some of the few sources of information about Wittgenstein's later philosophy; for example, Wisdom's work Other minds (1952) on the problem of other minds. One notion found in both early and later Wittgenstein is that "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." Philosophers had been misusing language and asking meaningless questions, and it was Wittgenstein's job "to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle." The later Wittgenstein develops a therapeutic approach. He introduces the concept of a "language-game" as a "form of life". By "language-game", he meant a language simpler than an entire language. Wittgenstein argued that a word or sentence has meaning only as a result of the "rule" of the "game" being played. Depending on the context, for example, the utterance "Water!" could be an order, the answer to a question, or some other form of communication. Rather than his prior picture theory of meaning, the later Wittgenstein advocates a theory of meaning as use, according to which words are defined by how they are used within the language-game.
The notion of family resemblance thinks things thought to be connected by one essential, common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of them. Games, which Wittgenstein used as an example to explain the notion, have become the classic example of a group that is related by family resemblance. Philosophical Investigations also contains the private language argument. Another point Wittgenstein makes against the possibility of a private language involves the beetle-in-a-box thought experiment. He asks the reader to imagine that each person has a box, inside which is something that everyone intends to refer to with the word beetle. Further, suppose that no one can look inside another's box. Under such a situation, Wittgenstein says the word beetle is meaningless. He also famously uses the duck-rabbit, an ambiguous image, as a means of describing two different ways of seeing: "seeing that" versus "seeing as".
=== Oxford philosophy === The other trend of ordinary language philosophy was known as "Oxford philosophy", in contrast to the earlier analytic Cambridge philosophers. Influenced by Moore's common sense and the later Wittgenstein's quietism, the Oxford philosophers claimed ordinary language already represented many subtle distinctions not recognized in traditional philosophy. The most prominent Oxford philosophers were Gilbert Ryle, Peter Strawson, and John L. Austin.
==== Ryle ====
Ryle, in The Concept of Mind (1949), criticized Cartesian dualism, arguing in favor of disposing of "Descartes' myth" of the ghost in the machine by recognizing "category errors". Ryle sees Descartes' error as similar to saying one sees the campus, buildings, faculty, students, and so on, but still goes on to ask "Where is the university?"
==== Strawson ==== Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950), a criticism of Russell's theory of descriptions. On Strawson's account, the use of a description presupposes the existence of the object fitting the description. In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson examines our conceptions of basic particulars.
==== Austin ==== Austin, in the posthumously published How to Do Things with Words (1962), articulated the theory of speech acts and emphasized the ability of words to do things (e.g. "I promise") and not just say things. This influenced several fields to undertake what is called a performative turn. In Sense and Sensibilia (1962), Austin criticized sense-data theories.
== Spread to other countries ==
=== Australia and New Zealand === Samuel Alexander's realism influenced Australian philosophy. The school known as Australian realism began when John Anderson accepted the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1927. American philosopher David Lewis later became closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years. In New Zealand, South African J. N. Findlay, a student of Austrian realist Ernst Mally, taught at the University of Otago. Karl Popper lectured at the Canterbury University College in Christchurch.
=== Sweden and Finland === In Sweden, Axel Hägerström broke away from Christopher Jacob Boström's idealism, founding the Uppsala School of Philosophy. The Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila is considered to have founded Finnish analytic philosophy. Kaila's student Georg Henrik von Wright succeeded Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1948.