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The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station

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Coffa's book (completed by his partner Linda Wessels, from a very nearly completed manuscript he left at his death in 1984) is the best source I know for insight into how interest in Kantian philosophical problems of the intuition transmuted to interest in language. This book tracks post-Kantian thought across its development into very different territory: Bolzano and Frege on logic; Russell's early logical atomism; Wittgenstein's Tractatus, and his transition to his later very different philosophy of meaning; Tarski on truth; Schlick, Popper and Reichenbach on the significiance of 20th Century developments in science; and Carnap, on the true significance of philosophical claims.

This book is a teriffic antidote to dry presentations of logical positivism which focus on the "verification principle" and thereby seek to dispatch it in one lecture in an introductory philosophy class. Instead, Coffa shows how logical positivism arose out of a living tradition and forms an important part of the history of contemporary philosophy. The questions we consider today are formed in part by the conceptual shifts of a century ago. It's good that we have a guide like Coffa to show us some more of our own history.

That, and the jokes (read the footnotes for some of the best ones, especially his love/hate relationship with Wittgenstein!) make this a delight to read.