PHIL 324L - Contemporary Analytic Philosophy

3 Credit(s)

Liberal Arts
This course will explore the origins and development of analytic philosophy, the dominant approach to doing philosophy in the Anglophone world today. It will trace its development from its early origins in Germany, Austria, and the U.K., which led to the formation of the Vienna Circle and the rise and fall of logical empiricism, and conclude with ordinary language philosophy and the advent of eclecticism in the 1960s. As we proceed, we will consider how analytic philosophy emerged in the late 19th century as a movement in philosophy associated with developments in logic and the philosophy of language, how it became conceived as a research project, and finally how it came to be conceived as a way of doing philosophy. While we will explore the history of analytic philosophy chronologically, we will do so by focusing on a handful of topics. Specifically, we will focus primarily on developments in philosophical method, considering its implications for debates in epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of mind. Some of the philosophers whose works we might study include J.L. Austin, Rudolf Carnap, Donald Davidson, Gottlob Frege, H.P. Grice, G.E. Moore, Hilary Putnam, W.v.O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Moritz Schlick, Peter Strawson, Alfred Tarski, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and others.

Offered When: According to faculty and student interest.
Prerequisite(s): PHIL 101L