Awards

• Winner of Winner of the 2020 Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize.
• Winner of Winner of the 2020 ^IJournal of the History of Philosophy^R Book Prize.

Overview

A long tradition, going back to Aristotle, conceives of logic in terms of necessity and possibility: a deductive argument is correct if it is not possible for the conclusion to be false when the premises are true. A relatively unknown feature of the analytic tradition in philosophy is that, at its very inception, this venerable conception of the relation between logic and necessity and possibility - the concepts of modality - was put into question. The founders of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, held that these concepts are empty: there are no genuine distinctions among the necessary, the possible, and the actual. In this book, the first of two volumes, Sanford Shieh investigates the grounds of this position and its consequences for Frege's and Russell's conceptions of logic. The grounds lie in doctrines on truth, thought, and knowledge, as well as on the relation between mind and reality, that are central to the philosophies of Frege and Russell, and are of enduring philosophical interest. The upshot of this opposition to modality is that logic is fundamental, and, to be coherent, modal concepts would have to be reconstructed in logical terms. This rejection of modality in early analytic philosophy remains of contemporary significance, though the coherence of modal concepts is rarely questioned nowadays because it is generally assumed that suspicion of modality derives from logical positivism, which has not survived philosophical scrutiny. The anti-modal arguments of Frege and Russell, however, have nothing to do with positivism and remain a challenge to the contemporary acceptance of modal notions.

Full Product Details

9780199228645

Table of Contents

Reviews

Sanford Shieh has made a major contribution to our understanding of the origins of analytic philosophy. This big book is densely argued, full of surprising insights about topics where he finds that common opinions are just wrong.... One after another, he overturns our facile accounts of the origins of analytic philosophy, and finds other stories hidden in plain view in familiar texts. Each time Shieh argues with precision and care to his conclusion, with deft movement through detail, as we wait for the conclusion to come down on our head.... I'm keenly awaiting the appearance of Volume II of Shieh's monumental work. In the meantime, there is much to digest in the many riches in Volume I. * Bernard Linsky, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

Sanford Shieh has made a major contribution to our understanding of the origins of analytic philosophy. This big book is densely argued, full of surprising insights about topics where he finds that common opinions are just wrong.... One after another, he overturns our facile accounts of the origins of analytic philosophy, and finds other stories hidden in plain view in familiar texts. Each time Shieh argues with precision and care to his conclusion, with deft movement through detail, as we wait for the conclusion to come down on our head.... I'm keenly awaiting the appearance of Volume II of Shieh's monumental work. In the meantime, there is much to digest in the many riches in Volume I. * Bernard Linsky, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *

Author Information

Sanford Shieh received a BA from Cornell University, an MA from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from Harvard University. He has taught at Wesleyan University since 1993.

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