Purpose
This is really just my reading list.
I decided to locate my very own variant of philosophical analysis in relation to its predecessors by first boning up on some of the key works, writing notes on them and then doing a page contrasting my own ideas with these deceased ancestors.
This page is really to help me keep track of progress, but I thought it might turn out of some help to others wanting to learn a bit about this corner of the history of philosophy.
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Two Cultures
If you are thinking of learning about the various kinds of philosophical analysis then its best to start with an appreciation that there are really two different cultures in conflict.
This accounts for some of the diversity in philosophical analysis, and makes the differences between some of the alternatives hard to reconcile.
The two cultures are, as ever, the
men of science
who are happy to come to grips with formal logic, and don't expect natural languages to be quite adequate for their purposes, and the
men of letters
who wouldn't go anywhere near analytic philosophy if they thought it could not be done in plain English (or their native language).
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Prerequisites
Logicism, logical atomism, logical positivism, and formal logical analysis all require a reasonable understanding of modern mathematical logic.
In principle you might be able to learn the relevant logic by reading the recommended sources, but this is not an approach I would recommend.
I would recommend a basic level of understanding of first order logic and set theory, preferably obtained from a text on mathematical logic, not a philosophy book.
Linguistic analysis doesn't really have any prerequisites, which may explain why this one variant of 20th Century philosophical analysis probably generated more paper than the others put together (and some).
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