PHIL 309: Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy

LARKIN: Spring 2003

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Reading Questions

I. Moore (Selections)

1. In what sense does Moore try to refute idealism?

2. What is the key idealist premise that Moore attacks, and what is the only sense it can have if it is to be both true and important?

3. What is wrong with the significant version of the premise?

4. Explain how Moore analyzes the proposition “Material things exist”.

5. What is Moore’s proof that things exist outside of us? What are the conditions of an adequate proof, and how does Moore’s proof meet those conditions?

II. Frege (On Sense and Reference)

1. Explain Frege’s puzzle and his argument for the sense/reference distinction.

2. What is the relationship between sign, sense, reference, and mental images associated with a term (see the ‘Moon’ analogy)?

3. What does Frege think is the referent of a sentence as a whole? What is his argument for this?

4. What are the three main categories of “subordinate clauses” that cause trouble for Frege’s theory of the reference of a sentence? How does Frege deal with them?

III. Russell (On Denoting)

1. How would Russell analyze the sentence, “The present king of France is bald”?

2. What does Russell think is wrong with Meinong’s and Frege’s views of denotation?

3. What is the key difference between these views on the one hand and Russell’s on the other?

4. Describe the three semantic puzzles that Russell thinks can be used to test a semantic theory.

5. What are Russell’s solutions to the three puzzles?

IV. Ayer (The Elimination of Metaphysics)

1. What do the logical positivists and Kant have in common? How do they differ?

2. What is the verification principle? Why/how do universal claims cause trouble for the principle, and how does Ayer deal with that problem?

3. Explain a couple of different ways Ayer uses the verification principle to critique the problems of traditional philosophy?

V. Carnap (Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology)

1. What is the problem of abstract entities?

2. Explain Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions. How are these different types of questions answered?

3. In what way is Carnap a logical positivist? Are there any important divergences between Carnap and Ayer?

VI. Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism)

1. What are the two dogmas of empiricism?

2. What is wrong with the attempts of understanding analyticity by using definitions or interchangeability?

3. Explain the relationship between the verification principle of meaning, the analytic/synthetic distinction, and reductionism?

4. Describe Quine’s picture of empiricism without the dogmas.

VII. Austin (A Plea for Excuses)

VIII. Quine (Ontological Relativity)

IX.