Book Description

Hochberg's masterful essays present studies in ontology and analysis that focus on the "revolt against idealism" strongly identified with the brilliant trio of Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early part of the twentieth century. The chapters focus upon the development of analytic philosophy and revival of realism. The volume is at once a history of a special period, time, and place in the evolution of the analytic tradition, an examination of influences upon and differences among these three major figures, and a close reading of their primary works. The author takes up the problems posed by reference and predication, truth, facts, causality, dispositions, intentionality, propositions, particulars and universals, the analytic-synthetic distinction, logicism. abstract entities, and materialism. The essays present a systematic analysis of such issues in the context of classical works of these three Cambridge philosophers, who were all critical to the development of modern philosophy. For those who wish to understand the essential contours of the work of these exemplars of the analytic tradition, there can be no more impressive work. Hochberg is more than a commentator; he is a participant in major debates within philosophy. Indeed, his critique of materialism and defense of realism rests on a sophisticated examination of the status of mental states or phenomenal objects in the world, and the inability of all varieties of reductionism to explain the universe. The materialist is in the same situation as the extreme idealists: denial either of mental states or physical states. For Hochberg, the old argument that only physical or mental states are real has littleto do with the phenomena about us. The great strength of Cambridge philosophy is in mov