Wittgenstein is acknowledged as one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth-century, but he is often considered to be difficult to read, let alone to understand. In this Beginner’s Guide, Peter Hacker, a leading authority on the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein and author of a dozen books on the subject, introduces a selection of the leading ideas in Wittgenstein’s masterwork, the Philosophical Investigations. The Guide presupposes no philosophical knowledge, only curiosity and a willingness to shed prejudices. It presents a magisterial understanding of the Investigations in an accessible and witty form.
The approach is bold: the seventeen chapters alternate between authorial lecture and dialogue between the author and an imaginary interlocutor. It is both dialectical and didactic. The interlocutor challenges Wittgenstein’s ideas as presented by the lecturer, and his questions are answered, his qualms resolved, and his challenges rebutted. Innumerable objections are canvassed and patiently refuted or dissolved by comprehensive argument.
Nothing comparable to this exists in the literature on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s revolutionary ideas are presented for the widest possible audience in all their profundity in a style that is both intellectually stimulating and entertaining.
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface; 1 Introduction; 2 Augustine’s Picture of Language and the Referential Conception of Linguistic Meaning; 3 Names and Their Meaning, Sentences and Descriptions; 4 Meaning and Use, Understanding and Interpreting; 5 Ostensive Definition and Family Resemblance: Undermining the Foundations and Destroying the Essences; 6 Metaphysics, Necessity and Grammar; 7 Thought and Language; 8 The Private Language Arguments; 9 Private Ownership of Experience; 10 Epistemic Privacy of Experience; 11 Private Ostensive Definition; 12 My Mind and Other Minds; 13 The Inner and the Outer – Behaviour and Behaviourism; 14 ‘Only of a Human Being and What Behaves like a Human Being …’: The Mereological Fallacy and Cognitive Neuroscience; 15 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy – I; 16 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy – II; 17 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy – III; Abbreviations; Further Reading; Index
Circa l’autore
P.M.S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He has specialized in philosophy of cognitive neuroscience. He has written a tetralogy on human nature.