Wittgensteinian Themes

Wittgensteinian Themes
Author: David Owain Maurice Charles
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780199246250

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For more than forty years, David Pears has been a major figure in Wittgenstein scholarship. He is author of many papers and three books on Wittgenstein's philosophy; Wittgenstein (1971) and The False Prison: A Study in the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy vols i and ii (1987-8). Andhe is, with Brian McGuinness, translator of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. This collection of essays on Wittgenstein, specially written for this volume, honours Pears's contribution to philosophy and to the study of Wittgenstein.Wittgensteinian Themes contains papers by Naomi Eilan on realism about conscious experience; P. M. S. Hacker on the legacy of the showing/saying distinction after the Tractatus; Hide Ishiguro on necessity and conventionalism; Brian McGuinness on solipsism; Barry Stroud on private objects, physicalobjets and ostension; David Charles on Wittgenstein's builders and Aristotle's craftsmen; Bill Child on platonism, naturalism and rule-following; and a philosophical recollection by Bernard Williams. The papers include scholarly debate on the interpretation, assessment and significance of Wittgenstein's writings, early and late; detailed discussion of Pears's own highly influential work on Wittgenstein; and exploration of relations between Wittgenstein and other philosophers, ancient and modern.

Wittgensteinian Themes

Wittgensteinian Themes
Author: Norman Malcolm
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780801430428

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At a time when interest in the Wittgensteinian tradition has quickened, this volume brings together fourteen essays by Norman Malcolm, a prominent philosopher who studied with Wittgenstein. Including some of Malcolm's last work, the papers address key aspects of Wittgenstein's legacy. Wittgensteinian Themes demonstrates the clarity and accessibility for which Malcolm's writing is renowned. Like most of his work, the essays examine basic issues in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Himself a noted philosopher, Georg Henrik von Wright has chosen the papers included here and appended to the volume his eloquent Memorial Address for Norman Malcolm, delivered at King's College, London, in November 1990. Professor von Wright has also supplied a brief preface.

Thought's Footing

Thought's Footing
Author: Charles Travis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2009-03-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199562377

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Thought's Footing is an enquiry into the relationship between the ways things are and the way we think and talk about them. It is also a study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: Charles Travis develops his account of certain key themes into a unified view of the work as a whole. His methodological starting-point is to see Wittgenstein's work as a response to Frege's. The central question is: how does thought get its footing? How can the thought that things are a certain way be connected to things being that way? Wittgenstein departs from Frege in holding that there are indefinitely many ways of filling out (giving content to) the notion of truth.. The truth of a thought or utterance is connected with the consequences of thinking or saying it. That is the point of Wittgenstein's introduction of the notion of a language game. The second key theme is this: a representation of things as being a certain way cannot take the right form for truth-bearing without a background of agreement in judgements: its form must belong to thinkers of a given kind. The third key theme is that the proprietary perceptions of a given sort of thinker as to what would be a case of judging when there is a particular way for things to be is not subject to criticism from outside it. Along the way Travis gives his own distinctive take on such topics as the problem of singular thought, the notion of a proposition, rule-following, sense and nonsense, the possibility of private language, and the representational content of experience. The result is an original and stimulating demonstration of the continuing value of Wittgenstein's work for central debates in philosophy today.

Criss-crossing a Philosophical Landscape

Criss-crossing a Philosophical Landscape
Author: Joachim Schulte
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1992
Genre: Analysis (Philosophy)
ISBN: 9789051834093

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Feminist Interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein

Feminist Interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Author: Naomi Scheman
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780271047027

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The original essays in this volume, while written from diverse perspectives, share the common aim of building a constructive dialogue between two currents in philosophy that seem not readily allied: Wittgenstein, who urges us to bring our words back home to their ordinary uses, recognizing that it is our agreements in judgments and forms of life that ground intelligibility; and feminist theory, whose task is to articulate a radical critique of what we say, to disrupt precisely those taken-for-granted agreements in judgments and forms of life. Wittgenstein and feminist theorists are alike, however, in being unwilling or unable to "make sense" in the terms of the traditions from which they come, needing to rely on other means--including telling stories about everyday life--to change our ideas of what sense is and of what it is to make it. For both, appeal to grounding is problematic, but the presumed groundedness of particular judgments remains an unavoidable feature of discourse and, as such, in need of understanding. For feminist theory, Wittgenstein suggests responses to the immobilizing tugs between modernist modes of theorizing and postmodern challenges to them. For Wittgenstein, feminist theory suggests responses to those who would turn him into the "normal" philosopher he dreaded becoming, one who offers perhaps unorthodox solutions to recognizable philosophical problems. In addition to an introductory essay by Naomi Scheman, the volume's twenty chapters are grouped in sections titled "The Subject of Philosophy and the Philosophical Subject," "Wittgensteinian Feminist Philosophy: Contrasting Visions," "Drawing Boundaries: Categories and Kinds," "Being Human: Agents and Subjects," and "Feminism's Allies: New Players, New Games." These essays give us ways of understanding Wittgenstein and feminist theory that make the alliance a mutually fruitful one, even as they bring to their readings of Wittgenstein an explicitly historical and political perspective that is, at best, implicit in his work. The recent salutary turn in (analytic) philosophy toward taking history seriously has shown how the apparently timeless problems of supposedly generic subjects arose out of historically specific circumstances. These essays shed light on the task of feminist theorists--along with postcolonial, queer, and critical race theorists--to (in Wittgenstein's words) "rotate the axis of our examination" around whatever "real need[s]" might emerge through the struggles of modernity's Others. Contributors (besides the editors) are Nancy E. Baker, Nalini Bhushan, Jane Braaten, Judith Bradford, Sandra W. Churchill, Daniel Cohen, Tim Craker, Alice Crary, Susan Hekman, Cressida J. Heyes, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Christine M. Koggel, Bruce Krajewski, Wendy Lynne Lee, Hilda Lindemann Nelson, Deborah Orr, Rupert Read, Phyllis Rooney, and Janet Farrell Smith.

Insight and Illusion

Insight and Illusion
Author: Peter Hacker
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2021-02-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1785276859

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Peter Hacker’s Insight and Illusion is a thoroughly comprehensive examination of the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thought from the Tractatus to his later ‘mature’ phase. This is a reprint of the revised and corrected 1989 edition, with a new foreword by Constantine Sandis. Hacker’s book is now widely regarded as the best single volume study covering both the ‘early’ and the ‘later’ Wittgenstein. Until this third edition, the book had been out of print for 25 years.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
Author: William H. Brenner
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791442012

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An imaginative and exciting exposition of themes from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, this book helps readers find their way around the "forest of remarks" that make up this classic. Chapters on language, mind, color, number, God, value, and philosophy develop a major theme: that there are various kinds of language use - a variety philosophy needs to look at but tends to overlook.

Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein
Author: Kelly Dean Jolley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317492382

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Wittgenstein's complex and demanding work challenges much that is taken for granted in philosophical thinking as well as in the theorizing of art, theology, science and culture. Each essay in this collection explores a key concept involved in Wittgenstein's thinking, relating it to his understanding of philosophy, and outlining the arguments and explaining the implications of each concept. Concepts covered include grammar, meaning and meaning-blindness language-games and private language, family resemblances, psychologism, rule-following, teaching and learning, avowals, Moore's Paradox, aspect seeing, the meter-stick, and criteria. Students new to Wittgenstein and readers interested in developing their understanding of specific aspects of his philosophical work will find this book very welcome.

Wittgenstein and Naturalism

Wittgenstein and Naturalism
Author: Kevin M. Cahill
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2018-01-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1315301571

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Wittgenstein was centrally concerned with the puzzling nature of the mind, mathematics, morality and modality. He also developed innovative views about the status and methodology of philosophy and was explicitly opposed to crudely "scientistic" worldviews. His later thought has thus often been understood as elaborating a nuanced form of naturalism appealing to such notions as "form of life", "primitive reactions", "natural history", "general facts of nature" and "common behaviour of mankind". And yet, Wittgenstein is strangely absent from much of the contemporary literature on naturalism and naturalising projects. This is the first collection of essays to focus explicitly on the relationship between Wittgenstein and naturalism. The volume is divided into four sections, each of which addresses a different aspect of naturalism and its relation to Wittgenstein's thought. The first section considers how naturalism could or should be understood. The second section deals with some of the main problematic domains—consciousness, meaning, mathematics—that philosophers have typically sought to naturalise. The third section explores ways in which the conceptual nature of human life might be continuous in important respects with animals. The final section is concerned with the naturalistic status and methodology of philosophy itself. This book thus casts a fresh light on many classical philosophical issues and brings Wittgensteinian ideas to bear on a number of current debates-for example experimental philosophy, neo-pragmatism and animal cognition/ethics-in which naturalism is playing a central role.

Beauty and the End of Art

Beauty and the End of Art
Author: Sonia Sedivy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1474255760

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Beauty and the End of Art shows how a resurgence of interest in beauty and a sense of ending in Western art are challenging us to rethink art, beauty and their relationship. By arguing that Wittgenstein's later work and contemporary theory of perception offer just what we need for a unified approach to art and beauty, Sonia Sedivy provides new answers to these contemporary challenges. These new accounts also provide support for the Wittgensteinian realism and theory of perception that make them possible. Wittgenstein's subtle form of realism explains artworks in terms of norm governed practices that have their own varied constitutive norms and values. Wittgensteinian realism also suggests that diverse beauties become available and compelling in different cultural eras and bring a shared 'higher-order' value into view. With this framework in place, Sedivy argues that perception is a form of engagement with the world that draws on our conceptual capacities. This approach explains how perceptual experience and the perceptible presence of the world are of value, helping to account for the diversity of beauties that are available in different historical contexts and why the many faces of beauty allow us to experience the value of the world's perceptible presence. Carefully examining contemporary debates about art, aesthetics and perception, Beauty and the End of Art presents an original approach. Insights from such diverse thinkers as Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Arthur Danto, Alexander Nehamas, Elaine Scarry and Dave Hickey are woven together to reveal how they make good sense if we bring contemporary theory of perception and Wittgensteinian realism into the conversation.