Logic and Language—A Collection of Classic Works in Analytic Philosophy

Author: Chen Bo, Han Lin (eds.)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-25
Features: Always clearly distinguish between psychological and logical, subjective and objective; never seek the meaning of a word in isolation but only within the context of a sentence; never disregard the distinction between concepts and objects.
—Frege Logic is the essence of philosophy.
—Russell Whatever can be said can be said clearly; whatever cannot be said should remain silent.
—Wittgenstein The meaning of a proposition is the method of verifying it.
—Schlick The whole of our knowledge or beliefs, from geographical and historical events to the profound laws of atomic physics, pure mathematics, and logic, is an artificial fabric. It merely touches experience along its edges.
—Quine The distinction between analytic and other kinds of philosophy has become relatively unimportant. It is a matter of style and tradition, not of method or principles.
—Rorty
Editing an anthology of classic works in analytic philosophy can be done in many ways, such as by theme (e.g., the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, etc.). After careful consideration, this anthology is organized roughly chronologically, with the selection criteria being: (1) its significant impact on the development of analytic philosophy, and (2) its originality of thought. However, there is also a technical consideration in the actual selection process: some classic papers, such as Russell's On Denotation, Strawson's On Reference, Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Tarski's The Semantic Concept of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics, and Davidson's Truth and Meaning, have already appeared in multiple published Chinese anthologies or translations. Due to space limitations, we have omitted them and selected other previously untranslated important articles.