Analytic Philosophy, Language and Meaning - Contemporary Western Philosophy - Philosophy Previous Year Questions

Bertrand Russell’s philosophy of Logical Atomism intends to establish his methodological and metaphysical standpoints. Which among the following is/are in accordance with his doctrine?

W. V. O. Quine famously writes in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’:

According to the theory advocated by G. Frege in his ‘On Sense and Reference’, the expression ‘the largest prime number’ would have ________.

According to Russell’s ‘On Denoting’, the proposition, ‘The prime number between 7 and 11 is NOT larger than 12’ would be true, if __________.

Read the passage below from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations carefully and answer the question.

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family – build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth – overlap and crisscross in the same way. – And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.

And likewise the kinds of number, for example, form a family. Why do we call something a “number”? Well, perhaps because it has a – direct – affinity with several things that have hitherto been called “number”; and this can be said to give it an indirect affinity with other things that we also call “numbers.” And we extend our concept of number, as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread resides not in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length but in the overlapping of many fibres.

But if someone wanted to say, “So there is something common to all these constructions – namely, the disjunction of all their common properties” – I’d reply: Now you are only playing with a word. One might as well say, “There is a Something that runs through the whole thread – namely, the continuous overlapping of these fibres.”

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Investigation No. 67

Which of the following statement[s] does Wittgenstein imply in the above passage?

In differentiating ‘knowledge by description’ from ‘knowledge by acquaintance’, which among the following is/are Bertrand Russell’s account of description?

Which one of the following options is challenged by G. E. Moore's 'Open Question Argument' concerning meta-ethical positions?

W. V. O. Quine, in his paper, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, rejects the boundary between synthetic and analytic statements. Which among the following correctly depict(s) his proposal of “Empiricism without the Dogmas”?

Which of the following options do/does NOT figure centrally in Rudolf Carnap’s rejection of metaphysics?

Match Column I with the Column II.

Column I	Column II
(P) Gilbert Ryle	(i) Speculative proposition
(Q) G. W. F. Hegel	(ii) Naturalist fallacy
(R) G. E. Moore	(iii) Resoluteness
(S) Martin Heidegger	(iv) Category mistake

Select the correct option.