Abstract

This introductory textbook is a combination of text and anthology, and also includes student exercises. It intends to be analytic in its approach, and the readings as well as the text are almost exclusively confined to recent analytic concerns. As its point of departure the author takes Broad's distinction between speculative and critical philosophy, with critical philosophy identified with analysis. As illustrative of the use of this distinction it is suggested that science has increasingly eliminated questions about "life and the universe" from appropriate speculation. Consequently philosophy is to aid in the coordination of scientific conclusions into a "balanced world-perspective," but philosophy does not interpret the whole of reality. The charge that all people, after all, have a metaphysical position is recognized but avoided by the claim that no clear analysis of the whole of reality is available, and by the proposal that no criteria are available to distinguish a better speculative theory from a less valid one. Critical philosophy is to analyze the assumptions of science, religion and ethics, not in order to develop a speculative system but to clarify how these assumptions function. Critical philosophy studies ideas about the world, more properly, the logical relation of such ideas, and not the world itself. The objectivity of such ideas lies in the agreement about rules for the use of such ideas. Having clarified the function of philosophy, interpretations are offered of meaning, truth, logic and explanation. By now one should not be confused, for it is the first requirement of the philosopher to be clear as to what he is doing. However, one may fear that even analytically inclined beginning students might have preferred a more analytic and thereby more clarified approach to the fundamental distinction between speculation and analysis upon which basis the entire book is projected.--H. A. D.