ABSTRACT
Analytical philosophers, as the designation suggests, set great store by possible analyses of concepts of philosophical importance. Conceptual analysis is an important means to an end. The means is clarificatory; the end is the pursuit of truth and understanding. The beginner in Philosophy needs to be informed that a great deal of contemporary philosophical discussion in the journals is concerned with providing counterexamples to proposed conceptual analyses. Philosophers who engage in conceptual analysis are concerned with the modal features of relationships among concepts. Bertrand Russell gave an analysis of definite descriptions in order to clarify the logical forms of various statements in mathematics, and in order to provide his theory of knowledge-by-acquaintance and knowledge-by-description. The analysis must be consistent with the claim that the words of our language have the meanings that they do as a matter of convention.
