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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analytic philosophy | 10/18 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:19:43.103246+00:00 | kb-cron |
==== Functionalism ==== Functionalism remains the dominant theory. Computationalism is a kind of functionalism. The view was first associated with Sellars. Putnam was also a functionalist. Another functionalist was Jerry Fodor, who is known for proposing the modularity of mind, a theory of innateness. He also introduced the language of thought hypothesis, which describes thought as possessing syntax or compositional structure (sometimes known as mentalese). Searle's Chinese room argument criticized functionalism and holds that while a computer can understand syntax, it could never understand semantics. A similar idea is Ned Block's China brain.
==== Eliminativism ==== The view of eliminative materialism is most closely associated with Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes; and with Daniel Dennett, who in works like Consciousness Explained (1991) is generally considered an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness (but not about intentionality). Dennett coined the term "intuition pump." Thomas Nagel's paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" challenged the physicalist account of mind; so did Frank Jackson's knowledge argument, which argues for qualia.
=== Dualism ===
Finally, analytic philosophy has featured a certain number of philosophers who were dualists, and recently forms of property dualism have had a resurgence; the most prominent representative is David Chalmers. Chalmers introduced the notion of the hard problem of consciousness. He has criticized interactionism and shown sympathy with neutral monism. Kripke also makes a notable argument for dualism. Epiphenomenalism, the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain but do not cause anything else in return, is sometimes classed as a kind of property dualism.
=== Panpsychism === Yet another view is panpsychism, or the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. Panpsychism can be contrasted with idealism by still believing in matter.
=== Perception and consciousness === In recent years, a central focus of research in the philosophy of mind has been consciousness and the philosophy of perception. The homunculus argument is an objection raised against many older theories of perception. While there is now a general consensus for the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness, there are many opinions as to the specifics. The best known theories in analytic philosophy are Searle's naive realism, Fred Dretske and Michael Tye's representationalism, Dennett's heterophenomenology, and the higher-order theories of either David M. Rosenthal—who advocates a higher-order thought (HOT) model—or David Armstrong and William Lycan—who advocate a higher-order perception (HOP) model.
== Philosophy of mathematics ==
Kurt Gödel, a student of Hans Hahn of the Vienna Circle, produced his incompleteness theorems showing that Principia Mathematica also failed to reduce arithmetic to logic, and that Hilbert's program was unattainable. Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel established Zermelo Fraenkel Set Theory (with the axiom of choice, abbreviated as ZFC). Quine developed his own system, dubbed New Foundations. Physicist Eugene Wigner's seminal paper "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (1960) poses the question of why a formal pursuit like mathematics can have real utility. Hilbert's Hotel shows some of the counterintuitive properties of infinite sets. José Benardete in Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics (1964) argued for the reality of infinity. The Grim Reaper paradox stems from his work. Finitists reject infinity. Akin to the medieval debate on universals, between realists, idealists, and nominalists; the philosophy of mathematics has the debate between logicists or platonists, conceptualists or intuitionists, and formalists.
=== Platonism === Gödel was a platonist who postulated a special kind of intuition that lets one perceive mathematical objects directly. Quine and Putnam argued for platonism with the indispensability argument. Edward Zalta devised abstract object theory. Crispin Wright, along with Bob Hale, led a Neo-Fregean revival with the work Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects (1983). Physicist Roger Penrose is also a mathematical platonist, in works like The Road to Reality (2004). Structuralist Paul Benacerraf has two well-known objections to mathematical platonism; one is about identification, and the other epistemological. In the latter, Benacerraf argues that while platonism explains mathematical semantics, it does not simultaneously explain mathematical knowledge. It is hard to know anything about a far-removed, platonic object. Predicativism is another alternative to platonism, utilizing Henri Poincaré's response to Russell's paradox. There are also Aristotelians in mathematics, such as Dale Jacquette.
=== Intuitionism === The intuitionists, led by Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer, are a constructivist school which sees mathematics as a cognitive construct rather than a type of objective truth. Brouwer also influenced Wittgenstein's abandonment of the Tractatus.
=== Formalism === The formalists, best exemplified by David Hilbert, considered mathematics to be merely the investigation of formal axiom systems. Hartry Field defended mathematical fictionalism in Science Without Numbers (1980), arguing numbers are dispensable.
== Philosophy of religion == In Analytic Philosophy of Religion, James Franklin Harris noted that:
...analytic philosophy has been a very heterogeneous 'movement'.... some forms of analytic philosophy have proven very sympathetic to the philosophy of religion and have provided a philosophical mechanism for responding to other more radical and hostile forms of analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy tended to avoid the study of religion, largely dismissing (as per the logical positivists) the subject as a part of metaphysics and therefore meaningless. The demise of logical positivism led to a renewed interest in the philosophy of religion, prompting philosophers not only to introduce new problems, but to re-study perennial topics such as the existence of God, the rationality of belief, the nature of miracles, the problem of evil, and several others. The Society of Christian Philosophers was established in 1978.
=== Reformed epistemology === Analytic philosophy formed the basis for some sophisticated Christian arguments, such as those of the reformed epistemologists including Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.