Vacuous Names in Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, and Moore

Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein

Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein were founders (although not by any means the sole founders) of the analytic tradition in philosophy; but they did not found the philosophy of language, which has roots stretching back much further. Their principal contribution, indeed, could be regarded as being in the opposite direction: it is not so much that they applied philosophical methods to the study of l...

off”: Cassirer’s Response to Frege and Russell

This paper concerns the reception of the new logic and logicism of Frege and Russell among the German Neo-Kantian philosophers of the Marburg school. Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer both object to Frege’s and Russell’s conception of the ground, nature, and demarcation of logic. This objection depends on the distinctive Marburg school philosophy of logic, arst articulated by Hermann Cohen: that “...

Frege and Russell: Does Science Talk Sense?

Over the course of the nineteenth century mathematicians became vividly aware that great advances in intuitive “understanding” could be obtained if novel definitions were devised for old notions such as “conic section”, for one thereby often gained a deeper appreciation for why old theorems in the subject had to be true (the new definitions were said to have proved “more fruitful” in these rega...

-1 - Perspectives on Early Analytic Philosophy

In recent years, analytic philosophy has gained a new historical self-consciousness. A considerable amount of work, both historically informed and philosophically subtle, is being done now on its origins and development. This is especially true for early analytic philosophy (roughly 1880-1930) and the corresponding works of Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. In this collection, fifteen pr...

“Critical philosophy begins at the very point where logistic leaves off”: Cassirer’s Response to Frege and Russell