Shand - Central Works of Philosophy v5

Central Works of Philosophy

Central Works of Philosophy is a multi-volume set of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Platos Republic to the present day, the volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing, covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work and clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas. Together these essays introduce the masterpieces of the Western philosophical canon and provide an unrivalled companion for reading and studying philosophy.

Central Works of Philosophy

Edited by John Shand

Volume 1: Ancient and Medieval

Volume 2: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Volume 3: The Nineteenth Century

Volume 4: The Twentieth Century: Moore to Popper

Volume 5: The Twentieth Century: Quine and After

Central Works of Philosophy Volume 5

The Twentieth Century: Quine and After

Edited by John Shand

In memory of my parents, Alexander Hesketh Shand and Muriel Olive Shand

First Published 2006 by Acumen

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Editorial matter and selection, 2006 John Shand. Individual contributions, the contributors.

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ISBN-13 978-1-84465-020-0 (hardcover)

ISBN-13 978-1-84465-021-7 (paperback)

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Designed and typeset in Garamond by Kate Williams, Swansea.

Contents

John Shand

Gary Kemp

Paul Snowdon

Anthony Simon Laden

Peter Vallentyne

Bernhard Weiss

Alan Malachowski

Kirk Ludwig

John P. Burgess

Peter Clark

A. W. Moore

Anita Avramides

Phillip Bricker

Ruth Abbey

Tim Thornton

Ruth Abbey is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Charles Taylor (Acumen), editor of Contemporary Philosophy in Focus: Charles Taylor and the author of Nietzsches Middle Period.

Anita Avramides is the Southover Manor Trust Fellow in Philosophy at St Hildas College, Oxford. She works on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics. She is the author of Meaning and Mind: A Gricean Account of Language and Other Minds, and editor of Women of Ideas.

Phillip Bricker is Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on possible worlds under the direction of David Lewis. He previously held positions at the University of Notre Dame and Yale University.

John P. Burgess has taught since 1976 at Princeton University, where he is now Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies. He is the author of A Subject with No Object (with Gideon Rosen), Fixing Frege and many papers in logic and philosophy of mathematics. His other philosophical interests include metaethics and pataphysics.

Peter Clark is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of St Andrews. He works primarily in the philosophy of physical sciences and mathematics and was Editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 19992005.

Gary Kemp is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He has written on various aspects of the philosophy of logic and language and logic, the history of analytical philosophy, Quine and Davidson.

Anthony Simon Laden is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of Reasonably Radical: Deliberative Liberalism and the Politics of Identity as well as numerous articles on democracy, deliberation and the work of John Rawls.

Kirk Ludwig is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. He works in epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind and action. He is editor of Donald Davidson, and co-author with Ernest Lepore of Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality and Donald Davidson: Truth-theoretic Semantics.

Alan Malachowski is Honorary Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Richard Rorty (Acumen) and editor of Reading Rorty.

A. W. Moore is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Hughs College, Oxford. His publications include The Infinite; Points of View; and Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kants Moral and Religious Philosophy and he is editor of Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, a collection of essays by Bernard Williams. He is one of Bernard Williamss literary executors.

John Shand studied philosophy at the University of Manchester and Kings College, Cambridge. He is an Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at The Open University and is the author of Arguing Well and Philosophy and Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (second edition, Acumen) and editor of Fundamentals of Philosophy.

Paul Snowdon is Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College London. Before that, until 2001, he was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has written mainly about perception and personal identity, but also about issues in the philosophy of P. F. Strawson, who was one of his tutors.

Tim Thornton is Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire. His research interests include philosophy of psychiatry and philosophy of thought and language. He is the author of Wittgenstein on Language and Thought and John McDowell (Acumen) and co-author of the Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry.

Peter Vallentyne is Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He writes on issues of liberty and equality, and left-libertarianism in particular. He edited