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In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world's most vigorous philosophical tradition. The central essay chronicles how analytic philosophy developed in the United States out of American pragmatism, the impact of European visitors and immigrants, the midcentury transformation of the Harvard philosophy department, and the rapid spread of the analytic approach that followed. Another essay explains the methodology guiding analytic philosophy, from the logicism of Frege and Russell through Wittgenstein's linguistic turn and Carnap's vision of replacing metaphysics with philosophy of science. Further essays review advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics that laid the foundation for a rigorous, scientific study of language, meaning, and information. Other essays discuss W.V.O. Quine, David K. Lewis, Saul Kripke, the Frege-Russell analysis of quantification, Russell's attempt to eliminate sets with his "no class theory," and the Quine-Carnap dispute over meaning and ontology. The collection then turns to topics at the frontier of philosophy of language. The final essays, combining philosophy of language and law, advance a sophisticated originalist theory of interpretation and apply it to U.S. constitutional rulings about due process.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. ix-xxiv
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  1. Origins of the Essays
  2. pp. xxv-xxvi
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  1. Part One: Milestones
  1. 1. Analytic Philosophy in America (2008)
  2. pp. 3-34
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  1. 2. Methodology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy (forthcoming)
  2. pp. 35-59
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  1. 3. Language, Meaning, and Information: A Case Study on the Path from Philosophy to Science
  2. pp. 60-70
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  1. 4. For Want of Cognitively Defined Propositions: A History of Insights and Lost Philosophical Opportunities
  2. pp. 71-103
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  1. 5. The Place of Willard Van Orman Quine in Analytic Philosophy (2013)
  2. pp. 104-138
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  1. 6. David Lewis’s Place in Analytic Philosophy (forthcoming)
  2. pp. 139-166
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  1. 7. Kripke on Epistemic and Metaphysical Possibility: Two Routes to the Necessary A Posteriori (2011)
  2. pp. 167-188
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  1. Part Two: Historical Problems and Controversies
  1. 8. What Is the Frege/Russell Analysis of Quantification?
  2. pp. 191-199
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  1. 9. No Class: Russell on Contextual Definition and the Elimination of Sets (2008)
  2. pp. 200-206
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  1. 10. Ontology, Analyticity, and Meaning: The Quine-Carnap Dispute (2009)
  2. pp. 207-228
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  1. Part Three: Current Topics
  1. 11. Two Versions of Millianism (2012)
  2. pp. 231-264
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  1. 12. What Are Natural Kinds? (2007)
  2. pp. 265-280
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  1. 13. Vagueness and the Law (2012)
  2. pp. 281-298
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  1. 14. Toward a Theory of Legal Interpretation (2012)
  2. pp. 299-319
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  1. 15. Deferentialism: A Post-Originalist Theory of Legal Interpretation (2013)
  2. pp. 320-342
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 343-350
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