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In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early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.

Philosophy, American --- Analysis (Philosophy) --- History --- American pragmatism. --- Begriffsschrift. --- Bertrand Russell. --- Carnap. --- Charles Sanders Pierce. --- Clarence Irving Lewis. --- David Lewis. --- Fifth Amendment. --- Fourteenth Amendment. --- Frege's puzzle. --- FregeВussell analysis. --- Gottlob Frege. --- Indeterminacy of Translation. --- Inscrutability of Reference. --- J. L.ӠAustin. --- John Langshaw. --- John Rawls. --- Kit Fine. --- Kripke. --- Millian terms. --- Millian. --- Millianism. --- Peter Strawson. --- Platonism. --- Principia Mathematica. --- Quine. --- QuineЃarnap debate. --- Rudolf Carnap. --- Saul Kripke. --- Semantic Relationism. --- The Logical Syntax of Language. --- The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. --- U.S. Constitution. --- United States. --- W. V. O. Quine. --- William James. --- Wittgenstein. --- a posteriori. --- abstract objects. --- analytic philosophy. --- analytic tradition. --- analyticity. --- arithmetic. --- attitude ascription. --- deferentialism. --- due process. --- empirical theory. --- epistemic possibility. --- epistemicism. --- extensionalism. --- holistic verificationism. --- information. --- intensional constructions. --- intensional facts. --- law. --- legal interpretation. --- legal norms. --- legal texts. --- legal vagueness. --- linguistic semantics. --- logic empiricism. --- logic. --- logicism. --- logico-linguistic analysis. --- mathematics. --- meaning. --- metaphysical possibility. --- natural kinds. --- naturalism. --- necessary a posteriori. --- no class theory. --- nonhyperintensional sentences. --- normative theory. --- ontological commitment. --- ontology. --- philosophical debates. --- philosophy of language. --- philosophy of law. --- physicalism. --- pragmatism. --- properties. --- propositions. --- quantification. --- quantified modal logic. --- quantifiers. --- science. --- scientific inquiry. --- semantics. --- substitutional quantification. --- tractarian theory. --- truth. --- underdetermination thesis. --- verificationism.