Semantic Analysis II

Abstract

In the preceding chapter I discussed in some detail one form of philosophical analysis — the analysis of concepts — which I had earlier classified under “Semantic Analysis.” In the present chapter I shall discuss a second, related form of “Semantic Analysis.” This form of analysis, it will be remembered, we have referred to as “exhibition analysis,” borrowing a convenient phrase from Stephan Korner. Some, perhaps many, of the method’s salient features, as set out and advocated by me here, are derived from or inspired by the pronouncements and especially the practice of the so-called later Wittgensteinians or Oxford (or Linguistic) Analysts. I am not, however, concerned with an exposition or analysis of the methods associated with these philosophers; nor do I claim that these thinkers would agree with the views here set out any more than the present writer accepts their own methods in their entirety. Similarly, my employment of the phrase ‘exhibition analysis’ is not intended to imply complete agreement on my part with Korner’s understanding of what he calls “exhibition analysis.”