In this provocatively compelling new book, Michael Luntley offers a revolutionary reading of the opening section of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations Critically engages with the most recent exegetical literature on Wittgenstein and other state-of-the-art philosophical work Encourages the re-incorporation of Wittgenstein studies into the mainstream philosophical conversation Has profound consequences for how we go on to read the rest of Wittgenstein's major work Makes a significant contribution not only to the literature on Wittgenstein, but also to studies in philosophy of language

Philosophical aesthetics is an area in which many strands of contemporary philosophical thinking meet. The contributors to this volume are aware of the wider logical, epistemological, moral and metaphysical implications raised by conceptual problems specific to aesthetics. Three themes recur and are taken up from different angles in several of the papers: pleasure - its nature and role in the experience of art and beauty; preference - figuring prominently in aesthetic appraising, appreciating and judging; and value - aesthetic value in particular, and the status of value in general. As these themes interweave, the complexities of aesthetics bring into focus some of the central issues in the philosophy of mind. The authors argue their cases with professional expertise and perceptive understanding of the arts, making significant and original contributions. This book should be of interest not only to philosophers but also to the readers who know, care and theorise about the arts. All the essays were commissioned for this volume, which is part of an informal series of books emerging from meetings sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation.

This is a volume of original essays written by philosophers and scientists and dealing with philosophical questions arising from work in evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence. In recent years both of these areas have been the focus for attempts to provide a scientific, model of a wide range of human capacities - most prominently perhaps in sociobiology and cognitive psychology. The book therefore examines a number of issues related to the search for a 'naturalistic' or scientific account of human experience and behaviour. Some of the essays deal with the application of such models to particular behaviour, stressing the problems raised by consciousness, and the information to be derived from the differing capacities of animals and people; others consider more general questions about the logic of the explanations provided by these kinds of approach. The volume continues the informal series stemming from meetings sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation.

This book was first published in 1985. The journal is concerned with the study of philosophy in all its branches: logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, social and political philosophy and the philosophies of religion, science, history, language, mind and education. The journal is not committed to any particular school or method and contributors are expected to avoid needless technicality. There is a section on new books which includes reviews, book notes and a list of books received.

What could Wittgenstein's work contribute to the rapidly growing literature on life's meaning? This book not only examines Wittgenstein's scattered remarks about value and 'sense of life' but also argues that his philosophy and 'way of seeing' has far reaching implications for the ways theorists approach an ancient question: 'How shall one live?'.

The relations between reason, motivation and value present problems which, though ancient, remain intractable. If values are objective and rational how can they move us and if they are dependent on our contingent desires how can they be rational? E. J. Bond makes a bold attack on this dilemma. The widespread view among philosophers today is that judgements contain an irreducible element of personal commitment. To this Professor Bond proposes an account of values as objective and value judgements as true or false, employing a distinction between grounding and motivating reasons to establish their connection with action. He defines and tests his position against a number of recent theories, providing in the process forceful criticism of Williams, Wiggins, Foot, Narveson and Nagel, among others. A distinctive contribution to the subject, it will stimulate interest and worthwhile debate among philosophers, while also serving as an introduction to this vital topic.

This is a study, in two volumes, of one of the longest-standing philosophical problems: the problem of universals. In volume I David Armstrong surveys and criticizes the main approaches and solutions to the problems that have been canvassed, rejecting the various forms of nominalism and 'Platonic' realism. In volume II he develops an important theory of his own, an objective theory of universals based not on linguistic conventions, but on the actual and potential findings of natural science. He thus reconciles a realism about qualities and relations with an empiricist epistemology. The theory allows, too, for a convincing explanation of natural laws as relations between these universals.

Alessandra Tanesini demonstrates that feminist thought has a lot to offer to the study of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, and that -at the same time-that work can inspire feminist reflection in new directions.

In "Wittgenstein: A Feminist Interpretation, "Tanesini offers a highly original interpretation of several themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy. She argues that when we look at his work through feminist eyes we discover that he is not primarily concerned with providing solutions to technical problems in the philosophy of mind, mathematics, and language. Instead, his remarks on these topics are intended to offer insights about human finitude, the loneliness of the modern autonomous self, and our relations to other human beings. Thus, the modern conception of the individual emerges as the critical target of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, both early and late.

This conception has also been one of the dominant concerns of contemporary feminist philosophy. In this book, Wittgenstein's insights are deployed to further feminist debates on issues such as identity, difference, the masculine character of the modern self.

An in-depth history of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, from a leading philosopher of language This is the second of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philosopher of language and historian of analytic philosophy, provides the fullest and most detailed account of the analytic tradition yet published, one that is unmatched in its chronological range, topics covered, and depth of treatment. Focusing on the major milestones and distinguishing them from detours, Soames gives a seminal account of where the analytic tradition has been and where it appears to be heading. Volume 2 provides an intensive account of the new vision in analytical philosophy initiated by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, its assimilation by the Vienna Circle of Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, and the subsequent flowering of logical empiricism. With this "linguistic turn," philosophical analysis became philosophy itself, and the discipline's stated aim was transformed from advancing philosophical theories to formalizing, systematizing, and unifying science. In addition to exploring the successes and failures of philosophers who pursued this vision, the book describes how the philosophically minded logicians Kurt Godel, Alfred Tarski, Alonzo Church, and Alan Turing discovered the scope and limits of logic and developed the mathematical theory of computation that ushered in the digital era. The book's account of this pivotal period closes with a searching examination of the struggle to preserve ethical normativity in a scientific age.

Irreverent and electrifying, when A. J. Ayer’s epoch-making work was published in 1936 it shook the foundations of British philosophy, and made its author notorious. He argues that if you cannot prove a statement by scientific methods, or by experience, it is literally meaningless. In this sense, everything else – morals, aesthetics, religion, philosphy itself – becomes nonsensical. For example, to say that murder is wrong is a meaningless statement – you are simply saying that you do not like it. Ayer’s shocking argument, known as Logical Positivism, was a direct challenge to orthodox morality. Yet it became a classic text, revitalizing British philosophy and setting it on an entirely new course.

Though little known today, Johann Friedrich Herbart was one of the leading philosophers of his age, the competitor of Schelling and Hegel. Although he was trained by Fichte, Herbart soon became a critic of the idealist tradition and developed a philosophy antithetical to it. His own philosophy was opposed to the idealist tradition in important respects: he defended a dualism between the factual and normative; he was an ontological pluralist rather than monist; and he accepted crucial Kantian dualisms that had been rejected by the idealists. Herbart was also an important forerunner of analytic philosophy, first in breaking with the idealist tradition, and second in insisting that the proper method of philosophy is the analysis of concepts rather than speculation about the universe as a whole. In the first intellectual biography of Herbart in English, Frederick C. Beiser studies the development of one of 19th-century Germany's most important philosophers, from his education in Oldenburg and Jena to his final years in Goettingen.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original thinker, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking far outside the bounds of philosophy alone. In this engaging Introduction, A.C. Grayling makes Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general reader by explaining the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought.

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are concerned to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject.

"The Lord of the Rings" is intended to be applicable to the real world of relationships, religion, pleasure, pain and politics. Tolkien himself said that his grand tale of wizards, orcs, hobbits and elves was aimed at truth and good morals in the actual world. Analysis of the popular appeal of "The Lord of the Rings" shows that Tolkien fans are hungry for discussion of the urgent moral and cosmological issues arising out of this epic story. Can political power be wielded for good, or must it always corrupt? Does technology destroy the truly human? Is it morally wrong to give up hope? Can we find meaning in chance events? In this volume, 17 young philosophy professors all of then ardent Tolkien fans address some of the issues and show how clues to their solutions may be found in the imaginary world of Middle-earth. The book is divided into five sections, concerned with: the power and the Ring, the quest for happiness, good and evil in Middle Earth, time and mortality and philosophical questions and fairytale endings.

Since the 1930s, philosophy has been divided into two camps: the analytic tradition which prevails in the Anglophone world and the continental tradition which holds sway over the European continent. A Parting of the Ways looks at the origins of this split through the lens of one defining episode: the disputation in Davos, Switerzland, in 1929, between the two most eminent German philosophers, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. This watershed debate was attended by Rudolf Carnap, a representative of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists. Michael Friedman shows how philosophical differences interacted with political events. Both Carnap and Heidegger viewed their philosophical efforts as tied to their radical social outlooks, with Carnap on the left and Heidegger on the right, while Cassirer was in the conciliatory classical tradition of liberal republicanism. The rise of Hitler led to the emigration from Europpe of most leading philosophers, including Carnap and Cassirer, leaving Heidegger alone on the continent

Violence and injustice are the two major political problems the world is facing today. By offering a fresh, innovative analysis of the concept of violence, this book presents an original insight into the nature of injustice, which forces us to rethink the scope and aims of a theory of social justice. More specifically, the book explores three closely related questions: What is violence? What is the relationship between violence and social justice? Can social justice be promoted through violence?

This book brings together two bodies of literature, on violence and on social justice that have hitherto developed and expanded in almost total isolation from each other. Needless to say, violence and injustice have a great deal in common, although it is a mistake to assume that an injustice is simply another word for violence, or vice-versa. "Violence and Social Justice" tries to make sense of the complexity of the relationship between injustice and violence.

This book pushes nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by linking revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy with anti-phenomenological realism in French philosophy. Contrary to the 'post-analytic' consensus uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against scientism and scepticism, this book links eliminative materialism and speculative realism.

In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world's most vigorous philosophical tradition. The central essay chronicles how analytic philosophy developed in the United States out of American pragmatism, the impact of European visitors and immigrants, the midcentury transformation of the Harvard philosophy department, and the rapid spread of the analytic approach that followed. Another essay explains the methodology guiding analytic philosophy, from the logicism of Frege and Russell through Wittgenstein's linguistic turn and Carnap's vision of replacing metaphysics with philosophy of science. Further essays review advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics that laid the foundation for a rigorous, scientific study of language, meaning, and information. Other essays discuss W.V.O. Quine, David K. Lewis, Saul Kripke, the Frege-Russell analysis of quantification, Russell's attempt to eliminate sets with his "no class theory," and the Quine-Carnap dispute over meaning and ontology. The collection then turns to topics at the frontier of philosophy of language. The final essays, combining philosophy of language and law, advance a sophisticated originalist theory of interpretation and apply it to U.S. constitutional rulings about due process.

This book examines phenomenal conservatism, one of the most influential and promising internalist conceptions of non-inferential justification debated in current epistemology and philosophy of mind. It also explores the significance of the findings of this examination for the general debate on epistemic justification. According to phenomenal conservatism, non-inferential justification rests on seemings or appearances, conceived of as experiences provided with propositional content. Phenomenal conservatism states that if it appears to S that P, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has some justification for believing that P. This view provides the basis for foundationalism and many ordinary epistemic practices. This book sheds new light on phenomenal conservatism by assessing objections to it and examining epistemological merits and advantages attributed to it. In a nutshell, phenomenal conservatism is actually compatible with Bayesian reasoning, and it is unaffected by bootstrapping problems and challenges that appeal to the cognitive penetrability of perception. Nevertheless, appearance-based justification proves unstable or elusive and its anti-septical bite is more limited than expected. These difficulties could be surmounted if phenomenal conservatism were integrated with a theory of inferential justification. The book appeals to scholars and postgraduates in the field of epistemology and philosophy of mind who are interested in the rational roles of appearances.

In this collection of essays Samuel Wheeler discusses Derrida and other "deconstructive" thinkers from the perspective of an analytic philosopher willing to treat deconstruction as philosophy, taking it seriously enough to look for and analyze its arguments. The essays focus on the theory of meaning, truth, interpretation, metaphor, and the relationship of language to the world. Wheeler links the thought of Derrida to that of Davidson and argues for close affinities among Derrida, Quine, de Man, and Wittgenstein. He also demonstrates the propinquity of Plato and Derrida and shows that New Criticism shares deconstruction's conception of language. Of the twelve essays in the collection, four are published here for the first time.
The fundamental resemblance between Derrida and such analytic thinkers as Quine, Wittgenstein, and Davidson, the author argues, is that they deny the possibility of meanings as self-interpreting media constituting thoughts and intentions. Derrida argues that some form of magic language has determined the very project of philosophy, and his arguments work out the consequences of denying that there are such self-interpreting mental contents. In addition, Derrida and Davidson agree in denying any "given." Without a given, questions about realism and idealism cease to have a point. Derrida and Davidson are both committed to the textuality of all significant marks, whether in neurons or on paper. They argue that there is no mode of representation more direct than language.

When we understand that something is a pot, is it because of one property that all pots share? This seems unlikely, but without this common essence, it is difficult to see how we could teach someone to use the word "pot" or to see something as "a" pot. The Buddhist apoha theory tries to resolve this dilemma, first, by rejecting properties such as "potness" and, then, by claiming that the element uniting all pots is their very difference from all non-pots. In other words, when we seek out a pot, we select an object that is not a non-pot, and we repeat this practice with all other items and expressions.

Writing from the vantage points of history, philosophy, and cognitive science, the contributors to this volume clarify the nominalist apoha theory and explore the relationship between apoha and the scientific study of human cognition. They engage throughout in a lively debate over the theory's legitimacy. Classical Indian philosophers challenged the apoha theory's legitimacy, believing instead in the existence of enduring essences. Seeking to settle this controversy, essays explore whether apoha offers new and workable solutions to problems in the scientific study of human cognition. They show that the work of generations of Indian philosophers can add much toward the resolution of persistent conundrums in analytic philosophy and cognitive science.

This book is about Gottlob Frege. The guiding thought is that Frege left philosophy a legacy which has been largely ignored, not least of all by his admirers. In order of logical priority, Frege's first concern was to locate the law-like behaviour of truths and falsehoods merely by virtue of their being such (in his terms, the structure of Wahrsein). The just-mentioned legacy lies in his first step towards that goal. It consists in winnowing the 'logical' from the 'psychological', the business of being true as such from that of holding, or holding forth as true-and to keep these separate. A first lesson: what belongs to what is thus abstracted cannot be read directly back into what it was abstracted from. This is what is most widely ignored. The book is divided in three parts. The first presents Frege's general picture of the business of being true-of what belongs to the abstraction. The second is primarily concerned with steps Frege takes (in print) between 1891 and 1895, to pave the way for what became, after logic itself, his central project, that whose attempted carrying out is contained in Grundgesetze I. The third part concerns views of logic, truth, the inexorableness of logic, which Frege eventually came to hold, and what it might be to study 'The Mind' as opposed to minds.

Bertrand Russell famously distinguished between 'knowledge by acquaintance' and 'knowledge by description'. For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, many philosophers viewed the notion of acquaintance with suspicion, associating it with Russellian ideas that they would wish to reject. However in the past decade or two the concept has undergone a striking revival in mainstream 'analytic' philosophy-acquaintance is, it seems, respectable again. This volume showcases the great variety of topics in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language for which philosophers are currently employing the notion of acquaintance. It is the first collection of new essays devoted to the topic of acquaintance, featuring chapters from many of the world's leading experts in this area. Opening with an extensive introductory essay, which provides some historical background and summarizes the main debates and issues concerning acquaintance, the remaining thirteen contributions are grouped thematically into four sections: phenomenal consciousness, perceptual experience, reference, and epistemology.

Quine's set theory, New Foundations, has often been treated as an anomaly in the history and philosophy of set theory. In this book, Sean Morris shows that it is in fact well-motivated, emerging in a natural way from the early development of set theory. Morris introduces and explores the notion of set theory as explication: the view that there is no single correct axiomatization of set theory, but rather that the various axiomatizations all serve to explicate the notion of set and are judged largely according to pragmatic criteria. Morris also brings out the important interplay between New Foundations, Quine's philosophy of set theory, and his philosophy more generally. We see that his early technical work in logic foreshadows his later famed naturalism, with his philosophy of set theory playing a crucial role in his primary philosophical project of clarifying our conceptual scheme and specifically its logical and mathematical components.