Overview
In the twentieth century English-language philosophy came to be science- and logic-oriented, and was suspicious of metaphysics. The Disappearance of the Soul and the Turn against Metaphysics traces our present philosophical outlook back to debates in Austro-German philosophy about the relation between empirical science and metaphysics: does empirical psychology depend on the metaphysics of the soul, the mental substance? The negative answer - that there is 'a psychology without a soul' - shaped Austrian philosophy and provided a model for ontologies that dispense with substances. Mark Textor tells the story of how and why (Austrian) philosophy turned against metaphysics . He introduces the key thinkers of the time, including the 'fathers of Austrian philosophy' Franz Brentano and Ernst Mach, whose Intentionalism (Brentano) and Neutral Monism (Mach) became distinctive and influential positions in the philosophy of mind. Textor goes on to use the 'psychology without a soul' view as a vantage point from which to reconstruct and assess the immediate pre-history and formation of analytic philosophy (Ward, Stout, Moore, Russell). While Austrian philosophers retired the soul, early analytic philosophers were happy to introduce a successor, the subject, and conceive of the mental as constituted by subject-object relations. The final part of the book returns to the theme of anti-metaphysics from a different perspective. In this part the early Moritz Schlick, who would soon become the leading figure of the Vienna Circle, takes centre stage. The final part of the book reconstructs Schlick's arguments for the conclusion that metaphysics lies beyond the limits of knowledge that are rooted in the philosophy of mind discussed in previous parts.
Full Product Details
Author: Mark Textor (Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy, King's College London)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Edition: 1
Dimensions:
Width: 16.50cm
, Height: 2.70cm
, Length: 24.20cm
Weight: 0.720kg
ISBN: 9780198769828
ISBN 10: 0198769822
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 17 September 2021
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
Mark Textor has written a fascinating book about the vanishing of a classical concept in philosophy:the soul...defnitely worth reading. * María de Paz, Metascience *
Mark Textor has written a fascinating book about the vanishing of a classical concept in philosophy:the soul...defnitely worth reading. * Mar´ia de Paz, Metascience *
Mark Textor has written a fascinating book about the vanishing of a classical concept in philosophy:the soul...defnitely worth reading. * Mar'ia de Paz, Metascience *
Author Information
Mark Textor is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. He previously taught in Bern, Hamburg, Munich, and Zurich. His main areas of research are history of analytic philosophy (especially Frege), philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind both from a historical (Brentano, Stumpf) and a systematic perspective.
