/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15821987]

Where to start with analytical philosophy? Is "Name and necessity" a good starting point?

[Anonymous No.15822022]

woah! kripke had based hair back in the day. good to know

naming and necessity
and
on the plurality of worlds by david lewis

are the two most important analytic philosophy books since late Wittgenstein

if you are unfamiliar with the field, you will likely find them exceedingly technical and inaccessible but sadly there is actually no slow way to immerse yourself in analytic philosophy

good luck. i'm in my last year of a phd in the field so happy to answer any questions

[Anonymous No.15822032]

>>15822022

maybe i am being unfair. if you could somehow read a primer on the context of what these texts are trying to achieve and the overarching projects and values of analytic philosophy are, it might help a lot.

don't know what to suggest other than maybe some generic plato SEP articles which are actually generally very good . or first picking up a 'history of analytic philosophy' book. i hear the two-part book by scott soames is decent

[Anonymous No.15822072]

>>15822022
>if you are unfamiliar with the field
i had some mathematical logic in university and some basic logic in a philosophy class

Currently i try to derive a logical statement from a terminological defintion to further derive mathematical equations from it. What logical "language" would be the best to do this?

[Anonymous No.15822257]

>>15821987
Do NOT start with Kripke. You can't just jump into a super technical text without any background in the problems that philosopher is trying to solve. You also need to understand the tools that philosophers use to analyzing arguments - one of them being logic. There are plenty of good introductory modern logic texts online (I used Graeme Forbes, not sure if there's a pdf somewhere). There's a difference between passively reading texts and understanding the structure of arguments, and the latter is a skill that you should develop which will end up helping you in more than just philosophy.

If you want to understand Kripke's "Naming and Necessity" specifically (and philosophy of language in general), you should start with Frege (Sense and Reference). It's a bit technical, but if you use plato.stanford.edu (the go-to resource for virtually every topic in philosophy) you should be able to get a grasp of it, provided you've had some practice with first order logic. Then go for Russell's "On Denoting" (coincidentally considered a paradigmatic text in the "analytical" method of philosophy) and read the responses to it.

Lastly, don't get hung up on the "analytic vs. continental" distinction. People aren't nearly so partisan about it irl as they are on this board. Just study what you're interested in, but make sure to understand the necessary context before doing so.

[Anonymous No.15822868]

>>15821987
The Stoics are unironically a good place to start. While they aren't Analytic at all, their philosophy of language and their logic are very similar to modern analytic conceptions of it. Read J.M. Rist's "Stoic Philosophy" and Benson Mate's "Stoic Logic" to get a basic grasp of the types of concepts dealt with in analytic philosophy (the latter also goes a bit into Frege and Carnap, which are also prime places to start). Plus, people make a bigger deal of it here than in real life so don't take it too seriously and shit on or ignore Continental philosophers because they aren't Analytic. Just study what you find interesting like >>15822257 says and start at the basics.

[Anonymous No.15823895]

>>15822257
>>15822868
People who suggest starting with logic and the greeks do philosophy for an ego boost and actually have no fucking clue what they're talking about.

>>15821987
You need a mentor. Not a teacher. A mentor. Some one who will gauge how much you can understand and direct you accordingly. Analytic philosophy is not very conducive to self teaching. Unless you are willing to spend the first 50 hours not understanding very much and have no choice but to do not go down this road alone. Also, pick a specific sub topic. I suggest starting with epistemology. Ignore anyone who name drops the big ones from the past or the basic bitch philosophers of science or logic. Modern analytic philosophy can be very accessible and straightforward. Much more so than stuff written hundreds of years ago. There's no need to sit through 500 page metaphysical bibles because some neckbeard on lit has a copy of them in his room and hasn't actually bothered to open them more than twice. Avoid papers for now. Save ethics and applied ethics for when you get worn down by the other stuff. Same goes for metaethics. Never ever do logic just because it seems like the reasonable thing to do. It has little to do with most field in analytic philosophy. You will find modal logic useful eventually, but that's far from where you are now. Don't get duped into caring about non classical logic (basically Graham Priest) unless you are absolutely fascinated by his stuff.

Finally, don't take notes. Write suggestions or responses to everything to read. It doesn't matter if they suck or don't make sense. There is a fake it until you make it element here. Really try to engage with the material. Notes are for low IQ losers and are not necessary in 99 percent of analytic philosophy if you understand what you are reading.

[Anonymous No.15823962]

>>15821987
Oh and if you don't profusely talk to yourself or feel your brain boiling while you read the stuff it's not for you. Sorry.

I can't stress this enough. If you're passive while reading someone like Richard Fumerton or Laurence Bonjour for example, you're not reading them right.

Almost forgot! Theology (even if you're an atheist) can be really, really good. It will introduce you to a lot of important stuff through a relatively simple medium. That being said, try to save Hasker and the non classical theists as a whole for last.

[Anonymous No.15824167]

>>15823895

>Gives people shit for giving valid advice
>Gives even worse advice
Please shut the fuck up. We're trying to get OP to understand a philosophical school and their philosophy of language, which inevitably involves reading the founders of said school like Frege and the concepts that they focus primarily on (which happen to be found in Stoic literature or at least literature about Stoicism since most of the Stoic corpus is lost to time). You have to start with the fucking basics before you can even choose which field you want to study effectively. That's why you're pseudy advice makes no sense.

[Anonymous No.15824215]

>>15821987
Reddit

[Anonymous No.15824265]

Intresting Kripke thread from a while back

>>/lit/thread/S14624285

[Anonymous No.15824359]

>>15822868
Addendum: Scratch the JM Rist book. It doesn't really deal with the philosophy of language or logic like I thought I remembered it to do. The other book is perfect though since it compares the Stoic account of logic (which is propositional in nature, like modern logic (at it's essence anyways)) and philosophy of language and compares/contrasts them with the founders of the analytic school like Frege. Another good book is "Philosophy without Intuitions", "Insensitive Semantics" and "Relativism and Monadic Truth" by Herman Cappelen. It's technical enough that it gives you an idea of what to expect with analytic philosophy but easy enough for a layman to understand if they put in the effort to think about it. So a minor retraction and adding several books in its place.

[Anonymous No.15824364]

>>15821987
Start with Frege.

[Anonymous No.15824376]

>>15824359
Also read Frege while you are at it.

[Anonymous No.15824619]

Start with Rorty and Dummett.

[Anonymous No.15824632]

>>15824167
>if you want to read Frege you ought to read Stoicism
Are you a complete fucking retard? Yes you are. You don't fucking need to start "with the basics" by reading ANYTHING by the Greeks.

AT MOST you could suggest a reading of Kant, as Frege considered himself a Kantian.

Idiotic retard.

[Anonymous No.15824638]

Start and end with Wittgenstein and Sellars

[Anonymous No.15824650]

>>15824638
Based, remember that Wittgenstein means anything but the Tractatus.

[Anonymous No.15824659]

>>15821987
I was using this, it's not a perfect guide https://fuckyeahlogical.tumblr.com/post/128964910533/analytic-philosophy-reading-list-for-the-self

I had a reader I can't find anymore which I 100% recommend first. It's a huge survey on what it is where it goes how it was etc. There are analytic metaphysicians now even analytic marxism and christianity. It's spread its wings if I find it I'll post it

[Anonymous No.15824669]

>>15824659
>Taleb - The Black Swan
uh oh

dropped

[Anonymous No.15824675]

>>15824669
Yeah you can ignore level 0, I did but wittgenstein's Vienna is great

[Anonymous No.15824686]

>>15824669
I started doing this path tho because I was more interested in it and it's better for logic https://www.logicmatters.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/TeachYourselfLogic2020.pdf

[Anonymous No.15824695]

>>15822868
good filename

[Anonymous No.15825367]

People who tell you to read Frege don't understand Frege and haven't read more than 10 philosophy books in their life.

[Anonymous No.15825413]

>>15825367
the graph of finding frege interesting and being retarded is strange

the more retarded you are, the more interesting you find him, then the smarter you get, the more you realize he's retarded, but then when you get even smarter, you realize he's one of the most interesting retards there ever was

[Anonymous No.15825422]

>>15821987
Positivism garbage that doesn't understand the world is radically illusory. The task of thought is not the accumulation of knowledge or meaning, but instead challenging though continually with illusion.

[Anonymous No.15826964]

>>15821987
Start with Frege's "Sense and Reference" for sure. You can spend more time on Frege later but for beginners you may be able to go to Russell's "On Denoting" next. You probably should spend more time on Russell too, in which case I guess The Philosophy of Logical Atomism is where he gives his philosophical system. After that, go read the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Next read Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic if you want beginner summary of logical positivism, but Carnap's The Logical Structure of the World if you want some good meaty systematic worldbuilding. Then read Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology," and you're off to Quine. The two most important Quine papers are "On What There Is" and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." The only other thing you need as a background to read Kripke after knowing all this stuff is Strawson's "On Referring," and maybe Kripke's own "Identity and Necessity," but even those two might be optional enough. Naming and Necessity is a very nice book. I haven't mentioned the Oxford ordinary language philosophy or Sellars but they're worth getting into as well eventually, just not necessary to reach Kripke.

[Anonymous No.15827021]

>>15825413
There is a huge overlap between what the smartest experts and the newest novices have, and it's people in the middle who think they're too smart to like what novices like but not smart enough to realize why the smartest experts like it as well. It boils down to this: People at the novice end are too dumb to understand how something over their heads is vulnerable to all kinds of criticisms, and people at the expert end are familiar enough with how nearly everything is vulnerable to criticisms enough to value everything in spite of this vulnerability, it's people in the middle who think some things' being vulnerable to criticism makes it 'shit' and never examine their own views and how vulnerable to criticism their own views also are.

[Anonymous No.15827056]

>>15825422
Sounds like fictionalism

[Anonymous No.15827178]

>>15825422
>Calling Kripke a positivist
Fucking pseuds ruin this site.