Element contents
Susan Stebbing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2022
Summary
Susan Stebbing (1885–1943), the UK's first female professor of philosophy, was a key figure in the development of analytic philosophy. Stebbing wrote the world's first accessible book on the new polyadic logic and its philosophy. She made major contributions to the philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophical logic, critical thinking and applied philosophy. Nonetheless she has remained largely neglected by historians of analytic philosophy. This Element provides a thorough yet accessible overview of Stebbing's positive, original contributions, including her solution to the paradox of analysis, her account of the relation of sense data to physical objects, and her anti- idealist interpretation of the new Einsteinian physics. Stebbing's innovative work in these and other areas helped move analytic philosophy from its early phase to its middle period.
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781009026925Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 15 December 2022
References
Baldwin, T. (2004). ‘George Edward Moore’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moore/.Google Scholar
Barcan, R. C. (1946). ‘A Functional Calculus of First Order Based on Strict Implication’. Journal of Symbolic Logic, 11: 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barcan, R. C. (1947). ‘The Identity of Individuals in a Strict Functional Calculus of Second Order’. Journal of Symbolic Logic, 12: 12–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaney, M. (2003). ‘Susan Stebbing on Cambridge and Vienna Analysis’. In Stadler, F. (ed.), The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 339–50.Google Scholar
Beaney, M. (2013). ‘What Is Analytic Philosophy?’ In M. Beaney (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beaney, M. (2016). ‘Susan Stebbing and the Early Reception of Logical Empiricism in Britain’. In Stadler, F. (ed.), Influences on the Aufbau. Cham: Springer, pp. 233–56.Google Scholar
Beaney, M. & Chapman, S. (2021). ‘Susan Stebbing’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stebbing/.Google Scholar
Bosanquet, B. (1888). ‘The Philosophical Importance of a True Theory of Identity’. Mind, 51: 356–69.Google Scholar
Broad, C. D. (1938). Review of Philosophy and the Physicists by L. S. Stebbing. Philosophy, 13: 221–6.Google Scholar
Burge, T. (2005). Truth, Thought, Reason: Essays on Frege. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carlson, S. J. (1992). ‘Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era’. Journal of Negro History, 77: 61–73.Google Scholar
Chapman, S. (2013). Susan Stebbing and the Language of Common Sense. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Coliva, A. (2021). ‘Stebbing, Moore (and Wittgenstein) on Common Sense and Metaphysical Analysis’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 29: 914–34.Google Scholar
Connell, S. & Janssen-Lauret, F. (2022). ‘Lost Voices: On Counteracting Exclusion of Women from Histories of Contemporary Philosophy’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 30: 199–210.Google Scholar
Connell, S. & Janssen-Lauret, F. (in press). “‘Bad Philosophy” or “Derivative Philosophy”: Labels That Keep Women Out of the Canon’. Metaphilosophy.Google Scholar
Douglas, A. X. and Nassim, J. (2021). ‘Susan Stebbing’s Logical Interventionism’. History and Philosophy of Logic, 42: 101–17.Google Scholar
Eddington, A. (1920). Space, Time, and Gravitation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frege, G. (1879). Begriffsschrift: Eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle: Louis Nebert.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A. (1913). ‘Some Ideals of the Suffrage Shattered by Searching Analysis’. The Woman’s Protest, 2: 3–8.Google Scholar
Hylton, P. (1990). Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (2022a). ‘Susan Stebbing’s Metaphysics and the Status of Common-Sense Truths’. In Peijnenburg, J. & Verhaegh, S. (eds.), Women in the History of Analytic Philosophy. Cham: Springer, pp. 169–92.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (2022b). ‘Ruth Barcan Marcus and Quantified Modal Logic’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 30: 353–83.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (2022c). ‘Women in Logical Empiricism’. In Uebel, T. & Limbeck-Lilienau, C. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism. London: Routledge, pp. 127–35.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (2018). ‘W. V. Quine’s Philosophical Development in the 1930s and 1940s’. In Quine, W. V. (author) and Carnielli, W., Janssen-Lauret, F., and Pickering, W. (eds.), The Significance of the New Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xiv–xlvii.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (2017). ‘Susan Stebbing, Incomplete Symbols, and Foundherentist Meta-Ontology’. Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 5: 6–17.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (in press-a). ‘Grandmothers of Analytic Philosophy’. In Cook, R. & Yap, A. (eds.), Feminist Philosophy and Formal Logic, Vol. 20, Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (in press-b). ‘Grace de Laguna As a Grandmother of Analytic Philosophy’. Australasian Philosophical Review.Google Scholar
Janssen-Lauret, F. (in press-c). ‘Grandmothers and Founding Mothers of Analytic Philosophy: Constance Jones, Bertrand Russell, and Susan Stebbing on Complete and Incomplete Symbols’. In Elkind, L. & Klein, A. (eds.), Russell and Women. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Jones, C. (2000). ‘Grace Chisholm Young: Gender and Mathematics around 1900’. Women’s History Review, 9: 675–93.Google Scholar
Jones, E. E. C. (1890). Elements of Logic As a Science of Propositions. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.Google Scholar
Jones, E. E. C. (1892). An Introduction to General Logic. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.Google Scholar
Jones, E. E. C. (1900–01). ‘The Meaning of Sameness’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1: 167–173.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1787). Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2nd ed. Translated (1929) Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. N. Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Katzav, J. & Vaesen, K. (2017). ‘On the Emergence of American Analytic Philosophy’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25: 772–98.Google Scholar
Klein, A. (1911). ‘Negation Considered As a Statement of Difference in Identity’. Mind, 20: 521–9.Google Scholar
Körber, S. (2019). ‘Thinking about the Common Reader: Neurath, Stebbing and the Modern Picture-Text Style’. In Cat, J. & Tuboly, A. T. (eds.), Neurath Reconsidered. Cham: Springer, pp. 451–70.Google Scholar
Ladd, C. (1883). ‘On the Algebra of Logic’. In Peirce, C. S. (ed.), Studies in Logic, by Members of the Johns Hopkins University. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., pp. 17–71.Google Scholar
Ladd-Franklin, C. (1889). ‘On Some Characteristics of Symbolic Logic’. The American Journal of Psychology, 2: 543–67.Google Scholar
Ladd-Franklin, C. (1911). ‘The Foundations of Philosophy Explicit Primitives’. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 8: 708–13.Google Scholar
Ladd-Franklin, C. (1912). ‘Implication and Existence in Logic’. The Philosophical Review, 21: 641–65.Google Scholar
Langford, C. H. (1942). ‘The Notion of Analysis in Moore’s Philosophy’. In Schilpp, P. (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. La Salle, IL: Open Court, pp. 321–42.Google Scholar
Laslett, B. & Brenner, J. (1989). ‘Gender and Social Reproduction: Historical Perspectives’. Annual Review of Sociology, 15: 381–404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacBride, F. & Janssen-Lauret, F. (2015). ‘Meta-Ontology, Epistemology, and Essence: On the Empirical Deduction of the Categories’. The Monist, 98: 290–302.Google Scholar
Mercier, C. (1915). ‘Logic: A Rejoinder to Miss Stebbing’. Science Progress in the Twentieth Century, 10: 17–26.Google Scholar
Milkov, N. (2003). ‘Susan Stebbing’s Criticism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’. In Stadler, F. (ed.), The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 351–63.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (1900–01). ‘Identity’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1: 103–27.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (1925). ‘A Defence of Common Sense’. In Muirhead, J. (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy, reprinted in Moore’s 1959 Philosophical Papers, London: George Allen and Unwin, pp. 32–59.Google Scholar
Paul, G. A. (1938). Review of Philosophy and the Physicists by L. S. Stebbing. Mind, 47: 361–76.Google Scholar
Pickel, B. (2022). ‘Susan Stebbing’s Intellectualism’. Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 10: 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1953). ‘Reference and Modality’. In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (2018 [1944]). The Significance of the New Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Quinton, A. (2005). ‘Analytic Philosophy’. In Honderich, T. (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 28.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1903). The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1910–11). ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11: 108–28.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1919). Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1926). Review of Ogden and Richards, The Meaning of Meaning. The Dial, 81: 114–121.Google Scholar
Shen, E. (1927). ‘The Ladd-Franklin Formula in Logic: The Antilogism’. Mind, 36: 54–60.Google Scholar
Soames, S. (2003). The Dawn of Analysis, Vol. 1: Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1914). Pragmatism and French Voluntarism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1915). ‘A Reply to Some Charges Against Logic’. Science Progress in the Twentieth Century, 9: 406–12.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1916–17). ‘Relation and Coherence’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 17: 459–80.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1917–18). ‘The Philosophical Importance of the Verb “To Be” ’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 18: 582–9.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1924). ‘Mind and Nature in Prof. Whitehead’s Philosophy’. Mind, 33: 289–303.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1924–5). ‘Universals and Professor Whitehead’s Theory of Objects’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 25: 305–30.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1926). ‘Professor Whitehead’s “Perceptual Object” ’. Journal of Philosophy, 23: 197–213.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1927). ‘Abstraction and Science’. Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2: 309–22.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1928). ‘Materialism in the Light of Modern Scientific Thought’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Suppl. 8: 112–61.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1929). ‘Realism and Modern Physics’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 9: 112–61.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1929–30). ‘Concerning Substance’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 30: 285–308.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1932). ‘Substances, Events and Facts’. Journal of Philosophy, 29: 309–22.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1932–33). ‘The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 33: 65–94.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1933–34). ‘Constructions: The Presidential Address’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 34: 1–30.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1933c). ‘The “A Priori” ’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Suppl. 12: 178–97.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1933d). ‘Mr. Joseph’s Defence of Free Thinking in Logistics’. Mind, 42: 338–51.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1934b). ‘Communication and Verification’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 13: 159–73.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1935). ‘Sounds, Shapes and Words’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 14: 1–21.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1938–9). ‘Some Puzzles about Analysis’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 39: 69–84.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1942). ‘Moore’s Influence’. In Schilpp, P. (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. La Salle, IL: Open Court, pp. 515–32.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. S. (1942–3). ‘The New Physics and Metaphysical Materialism’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 43: 167–214.Google Scholar
Tarski, A. (1956 [1935]). ‘Uber die Beschränktheit der Ausdrucksmittel deduktiver Theorien’. Ergebnisse eines mathematischen Kolloquiums, 7: 15–22. Reprinted as ‘On the Limitations of the Means of Expression of Deductive Theories’. In Logic, Semantics and Metamathematics, ed. and trans. A. Tarski & J. H. Woodger. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 384–92.Google Scholar
Uckelman, S. L. (2021). ‘What Problem Did Ladd-Franklin (Think She) Solve(d)?’ Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 62: 527–52.Google Scholar
West, P. (2022). ‘The Philosopher versus the Physicist: Susan Stebbing on Eddington and the Passage of Time’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 30: 130–51.Google Scholar
Wetzel, L. (2018). ‘Types and Tokens’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/.Google Scholar
Whitehead, A. N. (1898). A Treatise on Universal Algebra: With Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Whitehead, A. N. & Russell, B. (1964 [1910]). Principia Mathematica to *56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- 9
- Cited by