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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Herbert Paul Grice and Peter Thomas Geach

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Peter Geach
Born(1916-03-29)29 March 1916
Chelsea, London
Died 21 December 2013(2013-12-21) (aged 97)
Era20th-century
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic philosophy
Main interestsPhilosophical logic, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion
Notable ideasAnalytical Thomism, Omnipotence paradox
Influenced by[show]
Thomas Aquinas, Ludwig Wittgenstein

Influenced
G. E. M. Anscombe (wife), Anthony Kenny, Alasdair MacIntyre


Peter Thomas Geach, (born 29 March 1916, died 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher. His areas of interest were the history of philosophy, philosophical logic, and the theory of identity.
Geach was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He taught at the University of Birmingham from 1951 until 1966 when he was appointed Professor of Logic in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Leeds.[1] Geach was given the title of Emeritus Professor of Logic on his retirement from Leeds in 1981.[2]
Geach was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1965.[3]
He was awarded the papal cross "Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice" by the Holy See for his philosophical work.
Contents
 [hide]
1 Thought
2 Personal life
3 Selected publications
4 See also
5 Footnotes
Thought[edit]
His early work includes the classic texts Mental Acts and Reference and Generality, the latter defending an essentially modern conception of reference against medieval theories of supposition.
His Catholic perspective is integral to his philosophy. He was perhaps the founder of Analytical Thomism (though the current of thought running through his and Elizabeth Anscombe's work to the present day was only ostensibly so named forty years later by John Haldane), the aim of which is to synthesise Thomistic and Analytic approaches. He defends the Thomistic position that human beings are essentially rational animals, each one miraculously created. He dismissed Darwinistic attempts to regard reason as inessential to humanity, as "mere sophistry, laughable, or pitiable." He repudiated any capacity for language in animals as mere "association of manual signs with things or performances."
Geach dismissed both pragmatic and epistemic conceptions of truth, commending a version of the correspondence theory proposed by Aquinas. He argues that there is one reality rooted in God himself, who is the ultimate truthmaker. God, according to Geach, is truth.
While they lived, he saw W.V. Quine and A. Prior as his allies, in that they held three truths: that there are no non-existent beings; that a proposition can occur in discourse without being there asserted; and that the sense of a term does not depend on the truth of the proposition in which it occurs.
He invented the famous ethical example of the stuck potholer, when arguing against the idea that it might be right to kill a child to save its mother.
Jenny Teichman, fellow of New Hall, Cambridge, has characterised Geach's philosophical style as "deliberately outrageous".[4]
Personal life[edit]
His wife and occasional collaborator was the noted philosopher and Wittgenstein scholar Elizabeth Anscombe.[1] Both converts to Roman Catholicism, they married in 1941 and had seven children.[5] They co-authored the 1961 book Three Philosophers, with Anscombe contributing a section on Aristotle and Geach one each on Aquinas and Gottlob Frege.[1] For a quarter century they were leading figures in the Philosophical Enquiry Group, an annual confluence of Catholic philosophers held at Spode House in Staffordshire that was established by Father Columba Ryan in 1954.[6]
Selected publications[edit]
(edited, with Max Black) Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, 1952/1960/1966
"Good and Evil," Analysis (1956)
Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects, 1957/1997
Three Philosophers: Aristotle; Aquinas; Frege (with G.E.M. Anscombe), 1961
Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories, 1962
History of the corruptions of logic, inaugural lecture, University of Leeds, 1968
God and the Soul, 1969/2001
Logic Matters, 1972
Reason and Argument, 1976
"Saying and Showing in Frege and Wittgenstein," Acta Philosophica Fennica 28 (1976): 54–70
Truth, Love, and Immortality: An Introduction to McTaggart's Philosophy, 1979
(edited) Wittgenstein's Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 1946–47: Notes by P.T. Geach, K.J. Shah, and A.C. Jackson, 1989
Logic and Ethics (edited by Jacek Holowka), 1990
Truth and Hope: The Furst Franz Josef und Furstin Gina Lectures Delivered at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, 1998 (ISBN 0-268-04215-2)
See also[edit]
Omnipotence levels
Footnotes[edit]
^ Jump up to: a b c Boxer, Sarah (13 January 2001). "G. E. M. Anscombe, 81, British Philosopher". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 24 January 2010.
Jump up ^ University of Leeds, List of Emeritus Professors
Jump up ^ British Academy, List of Fellows
Jump up ^ Teichman, Jenny (10 February 1991). "Henry James Among the Philosophers". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 24 January 2010.
Jump up ^ "Professor G E M Anscombe". The Daily Telegraph (Telegraph Media Group). 6 January 2001.
Jump up ^ "Father Columba Ryan: priest, teacher and university chaplain". The Times (News Corporation). 19 August 2009. Retrieved 24 January 2010.
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Analytic philosophy

PhilosophersRobert Merrihew Adams
William P. Alston
J. L. Austin
A. J. Ayer
G. E. M. Anscombe
David Malet Armstrong
Robert Audi
C. D. Broad
Tyler Burge
John P. Burgess
Rudolf Carnap
Roderick Chisholm
Patricia Churchland
Paul M. Churchland
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
Donald Davidson
Daniel Dennett
Michael Dummett
Gottlob Frege
Jerry Fodor
Peter Geach
A. C. Grayling
Paul Grice
Alvin Goldman
Peter van Inwagen
Saul Kripke
Peter Hacker
Ian Hacking
Carl Hempel
Jaakko Hintikka
David Lewis
J. L. Mackie
Norman Malcolm
John McDowell
G. E. Moore
Thomas Nagel
Derek Parfit
D. Z. Phillips
Alvin Plantinga
Hilary Putnam
W. V. O. Quine
Hans Reichenbach
Bertrand Russell
Gilbert Ryle
John Searle
Wilfred Sellars
Peter Singer
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Bas van Fraassen
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John Wisdom
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Truth function, maker, and bearer
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Logic

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Martin Lings
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Nicolas Malebranche
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Paul Tillich
Pavel Florensky
Peter Geach
Peter van Inwagen
Pico della Mirandola
Reinhold Niebuhr
René Descartes
René Guénon
Richard Swinburne
Rudolf Bultmann
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Rudolf Otto
Søren Kierkegaard
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Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Chubb
Vladimir Solovyov
Walter Kaufmann
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William James
William Lane Craig
W.K. Clifford
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William Wollaston
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Ludwig Wittgenstein

FamilyMargaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein
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Early workPicture theory of language
Truth tables


Later workLanguage-game
Private language argument
Family resemblance
Rule following
Form of life
Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics


PublicationsTractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Some Remarks on Logical Form
Blue and Brown Books
Philosophical Remarks
Philosophical Investigations
On Certainty
Culture and Value
Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
Zettel
Remarks on Colour
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief


MovementsAnalytic philosophy
Linguistic turn
Ideal language philosophy
Logical atomism
Logical positivism
Ordinary language philosophy
Wittgensteinian fideism
Quietism


FriendsG. E. M. Anscombe
R. B. Braithwaite
Rudolf Carnap
Paul Engelmann
John Maynard Keynes
Peter Geach
Norman Malcolm
G. E. Moore
David Pinsent
Frank P. Ramsey
Rush Rhees
Bertrand Russell
Moritz Schlick
Francis Skinner
Piero Sraffa
Vienna Circle
Friedrich Waismann
Peter Winch
G. H. von Wright


BiographersDavid Edmonds
Ray Monk
William Warren Bartley


Secondary sourcesA. J. Ayer
Gordon Baker
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Cora Diamond
Terry Eagleton
Peter Hacker
Saul Kripke
Anthony Kenny
Warren Goldfarb
Stanley Cavell
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Peter Hacker
Colin McGinn
Jaakko Hintikka
Oswald Hanfling
A. C. Grayling
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Barry Stroud
Stephen Toulmin
Crispin Wright
Fergus Kerr


MiscellaneousCambridge Apostles
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Haidbauer incident
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FilmWittgenstein (film)





Authority controlWorldCat
VIAF: 108298621
LCCN: n79145630
ISNI: 0000 0001 0931 0716
GND: 119000954


Persondata
NameGeach, Peter
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth29 March 1916
Place of birthLondon
Date of death
Place of death

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Geach&oldid=587225808"
Categories:
1916 births
20th-century philosophers
21st-century philosophers
Academics of the University of Cambridge
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
Analytic philosophers
British philosophers
Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club
Converts to Roman Catholicism
Christian philosophers
English Roman Catholics
Honorary Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford
Living people
Logicians
People educated at Clifton College
Philosophers of language
Recipients of the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice
Roman Catholic philosophers
Wittgensteinian philosophers
Academics of the University of Leeds
Thomist philosophers
Metaphysicians
Historians of philosophy
Philosophers of religion

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