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The Cambridge Revolt Against Idealism: Was There Ever an Eden?
Author(s) -
Macbride Fraser
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2011.01736.x
Subject(s) - idealism , realism , philosophy , mythology , epistemology , ontology , scholarship , object (grammar) , theology , linguistics , law , political science
According to one creation myth, analytic philosophy emerged in C ambridge when M oore and R ussell abandoned idealism in favour of naive realism: every word stood for something; it was only after “the F all,” R ussell's discovery of his theory of descriptions, that they realized some complex phrases (“the present K ing of F rance”) didn't stand for anything. It has become a commonplace of recent scholarship to object that even before the F all, R ussell acknowledged that such phrases may fail to denote. But we need to go further: even before the F all, R ussell had taken an altogether more discerning approach to the ontology of logic and relations than is usually recognized.