Truth by analysis : games, names, and philosophy

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Truth by analysis : games, names, and philosophy

Colin McGinn

Oxford University Press, c2012

  • : hardcover

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-180) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

What kind of subject is philosophy? Colin McGinn takes up this perennial question, defending the view that philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, construed broadly. Conceptual analysis is understood to involve the search for de re essences, but McGinn takes up various challenges to this meta-philosophy: that some concepts are merely family resemblance concepts with no definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions ("game", "language"); that it is impossible to provide sufficient conditions for some philosophically important concepts without circularity ("knowledge", "intentional action"); that there exists an unsolved paradox of analysis; that there is no well-defined analytic-synthetic distinction; that names have no definition; and that conceptual analysis is not properly naturalistic. Ultimately, McGinn finds none of these objections convincing: analysis emerges as both possible and fruitful. At the same time, he rejects the idea of the "linguistic turn", arguing that analysis is not directed to language as such, but at reality. Going on to distinguish several types of analysis, with an emphasis on classical decompositional analysis, he shows different philosophical traditions to be engaged in conceptual analysis when properly understood. Philosophical activity has the kind of value possessed by play, McGinn claims, which differs from the kind of value possessed by scientific activity. The book concludes with an analytic discussion of the prospects for traditional ontology and the nature of instantiation. McGinn's study of the nature of philosophy shows us how philosophy can maintain its connection to the past while looking forward to a bright future.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • 1. Philosophy and Analysis
  • 2. Definition and Family Resemblance
  • 3. Sufficiency and Circularity
  • 4. The Paradox of Analysis
  • 5. Psychologism and the Linguistic Turn
  • 6. The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
  • 7. The Whole of Philosophy
  • 8. The Sense of Names
  • 9. Naturalism and Philosophical Method
  • 10. Philosophy as Play
  • 11. The Possibility of Ontology
  • 12. The Concept of Instantiation
  • Bibliography

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Details

  • NCID
    BB08796469
  • ISBN
    • 9780199856145
  • LCCN
    2011013650
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    New York
  • Pages/Volumes
    ix, 189 p.
  • Size
    25 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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