Wittgenstein expounds his notion of a family resemblance in two important passages. The first is from The Blue Book:This craving for generality is the resultant of a number of tendencies connected with particular philosophical confusions. There is— The tendency to look for something common to entities which we commonly subsume under a general term. We are inclined to think that there must be something common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for (...) applying the general term “game” to the various games; whereas the games form a family the members of which have family likenesses …. There is a tendency rooted in our usual forms of expression, to think that a man who has learnt to understand a general term, say, the term “leaf,” has thereby come to possess a kind of general picture of a leaf, as opposed to pictures of particular leaves …. This again is connected with the idea that the meaning of a word is an image, or a thing correlated with the word. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Games Form a Family What Is Common to All These Leaves? Expressions Constructed on Analogical Patterns The Human Form of Life Clusters and Families A Case for Methodological Pluralism.

Self-Hypnosis: The Complete Manual for Health and Self-Change, 2nd ed offers a step-by step guide to using hypnosis to better well-being and stronger self-control. For over two decades renowned therapist and author Brian Alman showed thousands of individuals how to use self-inductive techniques for relief from pain, stress, and discomfort. Self-hypnosis assists in meditation and fosters positive self-regard. The exercises in Self-Hypnosis are clear, concise and easily attainable. As an effective therapy in alleviating the pain of childbirth, medical and dental (...) surgery, burns, and accidental injuries, hypnosis is practiced widely. Hypnosis in pain relief is a noninvasive and natural healing process. Self-Hypnosis makes this healing technique available to the lay reader. (shrink)

When in May 1930, the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, had to decide whether to renew Wittgenstein's research grant, it turned to Bertrand Russell for an assessment of the work Wittgenstein had been doing over the past year. His verdict: "The theories contained in this new work . . . are novel, very original and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. As a logician who likes simplicity, I should like to think that they are not, but (...) from what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have an opportunity to work them out, since, when completed, they may easily prove to constitute a whole new philosophy." "[ Philosophical Remarks ] contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and of mathematics. Principally, he here discusses the role of indispensable in language, criticizing Russell's The Analysis of Mind . He modifies the Tractatus 's picture theory of meaning by stressing that the connection between the proposition and reality is not found in the picture itself. He analyzes generality in and out of mathematics, and the notions of proof and experiment. He formulates a pain/private-language argument and discusses both behaviorism and the verifiability principle. The work is difficult but important, and it belongs in every philosophy collection."--Robert Hoffman, Philosophy "Any serious student of Wittgenstein's work will want to study his Philosophical Remarks as a transitional book between his two great masterpieces. The Remarks is thus indispensible for anyone who seeks a complete understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy."--Leonard Linsky, American Philosophical Association. (shrink)

Brenner labels his book a “companion”. It provides a workbook or roadmap that can used to guide one’s reading of Philosophical Investigations. Its first half follows the progression of Wittgenstein’s text. Rather than providing a traditional commentary, Brenner proceeds by testing paraphrases of key sections, juxtaposing well-traveled with less familiar passages, and constructing ongoing dialogues with various Wittgensteinian interlocutors. The book’s second half presents interpretative essays on Wittgenstein’s treatment of the mental, the grammar of color and number (...) talk, and the idea of “theology as grammar.” Brenner skillfully navigates the difficult paths of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of traditional philosophy. While emphasizing that Wittgenstein’s philosophical activity systematically opposes itself to reductionism and to attempts to think beyond the limits of thought and language, he avoids the pitfalls of ascribing to Wittgenstein a dogmatic standard by which to deem traditional metaphysical theorizing nonsensical. He appreciates that to understand how Wittgenstein puts the nature of philosophy in question, we must work through the ways his methods force our attention onto particulars and dampen our “craving for generality.” Wittgenstein tries to impress on us the need to reexamine the details of our lives as language users, and to lead us to the “real discovery” that affords a “complete clarity” on which “the philosophical problems should completely disappear”. In this call for attentiveness, Brenner finds the essential spirit of Wittgenstein’s thinking. Here “the true value of philosophy lies in this clarificatory activity”, and “life ceases to seem essentially problematic”. (shrink)

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the work's major themes, such as the connection between meaning (...) and use, the nature of concepts, thought and intentionality, and language games. Bringing together leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars, it offers a genuinely critical approach and demonstrating Wittgenstein's relevance for contemporary philosophy. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the later Wittgenstein, in addition to those interested in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

This anthology identifies four central themes in Wittgenstein's Investigations — reference and meaning, rules and their application, the interiority of mind and the alleged uses of private languages, and necessity and grammar-and provides important recent essays that explore these themes in lucid detail. Intended for both the novice and experienced reader of Wittgenstein's classic work, this book includes important notes and references to help make his problems and arguments more accessible.

An essential resource for students of Wittgenstein, this collection contains faithful, in some cases expanded and corrected, versions of many important pieces never before available in a single volume, including Notes for the 'Philosophical Lecture', published here for the first time. Fifteen selections, with bi-lingual versions of those originally written in German, span the development of Wittgenstein's thought, his range of interests, and his methods of philosophical investigation. Short introductions, an index, and an updated version of Georg Henrik (...) von Wright's The Wittgenstein Papers situate the selections within the broader context of the Wittgenstein corpus and the history of its publication. (shrink)

This article presents an edition of unpublished notes by Sraffa on Wittgenstein’s “Blue Book”, written about 1941 and housed at Trinity College Library, Cambridge. The article includes an introduction to the relationship between Sraffa and Wittgenstein and concludes with an interpretation of various philosophical issues addressed in the notes, namely that of solipsism. Various connections between the “Blue Book” and the Philosophical Investigations are traced.

This chapter discusses some general features of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work, then gives an overview of his early writings, and finally surveys his philosophical activities after 1929. The evidence collected suggests that there is quite substantial continuity, but also one major turning point in Wittgenstein's way of handling philosophical questions. This turning point took place around 1931‐1932. Wittgenstein took great care of his manuscripts. To him philosophy was definitely not one of the sciences, but neither was it to (...) consist of “transcendental twaddle”. Coming from an engineering background, Wittgenstein entered philosophy through reading and meeting Frege and Russell around 1911. From a more philosophical perspective it is tempting to look for differences of doctrine. In this way one can distinguish, e.g., Wittgenstein's early logical atomism, his middle theoretical holism, and his late practical holism. His aim changed from deducing logical syntax to a description of the grammar of our language. (shrink)

Rush Rhees, a close friend of Wittgenstein and a major interpreter of his work, shows how Wittgenstein's _On Certainty_ concerns logic, language, and reality – topics that occupied Wittgenstein since early in his career. Authoritative interpretation of Wittgenstein's last great work, _On Certainty_, by one of his closest friends. Debunks misconceptions about Wittgenstein's _On Certainty_ and shows that it is an essay on logic. Exposes the continuity in Wittgenstein's thought, and the radical character of his conclusions. Contains a substantial (...) and illuminating afterword discussing current scholarship surrounding _On Certainty_, and its relationship to Rhees's work on this subject. (shrink)

In this paper I have two objectives. First, I attempt to call attention to the incoherence of the widely accepted anti-essentialist interpretation of Wittgenstein’s family resemblance point. Second, I claim that the family resemblance idea is not meant to reject essentialism, but to render this doctrine irrelevant, by dissipating its philosophical force. I argue that the role of the family resemblance point in later Wittgenstein’s views can be better understood in light of the provocative aim of his philosophical (...) method, as stated (for instance) in PI 133: “[t]he philosophical problems” - associated with essentialism in this case, "should completely disappear". (shrink)

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, David Stern examines Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He gives particular attention to both the arguments of the Investigations and the way in which the work is written, and especially to the role of dialogue in the book. While he concentrates on helping the reader to arrive at his or her own interpretation of the primary text, he also provides guidance to the unusually wide range of existing interpretations, and to (...) the reasons why the Investigations have inspired such a diversity of readings. Following closely the text of the Investigations and meant to be read alongside it, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Wittgenstein, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

Early work from a leader in analytic philosophy From Parmenides to Wittgenstein, Volume 1: Collected Philosophical Papers is part of a multi-volume publication of G.E.M. Anscombe's collected works. Writing on philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic, Anscombe is known as one of analytical Thomisms's most prominent figures. This collection includes her writing on the work of her teacher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, with whom she worked closely as co-editor and translator.

This text is a dynamic new translation of Wittgenstein' s most famous work -- one of the most influential philosophy works of the Twentieth Century. Kolak' s translation is the first to read like an original work written in English and is the first to restore the poetical and lyrical qualities of the original Tractatus as intended by the author.

From his return to Cambridge in 1929 to his death in 1951, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who published only one work in his lifetime, influenced philosophy almost exclusively through teaching and discussion. These lecture notes, therefore, are an important record of the development of Wittgenstein's thought; they indicate the interests he maintained in his later years and signal what he considered the salient features of his thinking. Further, the notes from an enlightening addition to his posthumously published writings. P. T. Geach, A. (...) C. Jackson, and K. J. Shah kept meticulous notes from the last formal course that Wittgenstein taught at Cambridge. In order to reconstruct as accurately as possible the words of Wittgenstein, this volume compiles all three sets of notes with no attempt to conflate or edit them beyond rendering them into lucid English. Topics covered by the notes in this volume include the private language argument, the grammar of sensation statements, certainty and experimentation in psychology, and, in general, the same set of concerns as are to be found in his Last Writings and Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology . The source material provided in these lecture notes is vital to Wittgenstein scholarship. (shrink)

Guarding against reliance on his own biography and romantic tendencies in Bildungsroman literature, I draw parallels to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s use of the journey trope and place-based inquiry in the Philosophical Investigations, as an exploration of concept development and confusion that exhorts and guides readers in traversing the borderlands of their own cultural–linguistic practices. l recall Wittgenstein’s journey in search of himself: his retreat from Cambridge to a remote hut in Norway, leading him on a philosophical search for meaning. (...) This self-transformative (Bildung) process of writing the Philosophical Investigations offers new ways for thinking the concept of ‘place’: not the bounding limit of things/beings; rather, working through the linguistic turn in philosophy, as potentially meaningful ‘sites’ in conceptually familiar/unfamiliar landscapes of native languages. The Investigations also carries ancient Heraclitian and Homeric tropes of homecoming and authenticity: ‘searching ourselves’ and ‘becoming who we are’, as found in Wittgenstein’s call to ‘know our way about’—rediscovering the grammatical order operating out of view but pervading the world as we see and know it, as well as setting its limits. Awareness of different languages of place is crucial to appreciating Indigenous discourses of Land-based education—a topic central to discussions of incorporating Indigenous knowledge while decolonizing education. Rethinking Bildungsroman literature in postcolonial terms—through the lens of reconciliation, renaissance, and resurgence —I call for careful listening to Indigenous peoples’ storied landscapes instead of fact-checking them: recognizing their sovereign right to self-govern their own education and resources. The goal is not to assess the truths of Land-based education, as in some epistemological inquiries, nor to make them accessible as pedagogical resources or instruments for non-Indigenous educators. The aim rather is to promote respect for its deep, nearly inaccessible context within Indigenous grammars and ways of life. (shrink)

Some science educators claim that children enter science classrooms with a conception of heat considered by physicists to be incorrect and speculate that “misconceptions” may result from the way heat is talked about in everyday language (e.g., Lautrey and Mazens, 2004 ; Slotta and Chi, 2006 ). We investigated talk about heat in naturalistic conversation to explore the claim that children often hear heat discussed as a substance rather than as a process, potentially hindering later learning of heat as energy (...) involved in emergent processes. We explored naturalistic speech among children and adults to understand the nature and the frequency of heat- and temperature-related conversations that young children are involved in. This study aims to investigate the actual linguistic resources that children have available as part of a sociocultural approach to cognitive development. Parents’ everyday conversations about heat and temperature with their 2–6-year-old children were drawn from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) language database and from a parent–child book-reading study. Parents used the word heat rarely, but they did so in ways that implied it is a substance. Parents never talked about heat as an emergent process but sometimes as a direct causal process. Most of the heat- and temperature-related talk, however, focused on words like hot and cold to describe temperature as a property of objects. This investigation of what young children actually experience in everyday conversations is a step toward studying how everyday language may play a role in children’s understanding of heat and temperature. (shrink)

Brendan Wilson leads the reader through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, revealing a new clarity, singleness of purpose and contemporary relevance in this acknowledged masterpiece.

The metaphysician wants to go beneath surface phenomena and to get at the essence of things, But instead arrives at a "picture" suggested by everyday language. Eliminating pictures requires bringing out the facts of everyday use and is not positivism or psychoanalysis. Still pictures arrange facts and lead to theories though not giving underlying realities. Rather essence is in usage: "essence is expressed by grammar". Thus philosophical therapy leads to closer accord with the world.

If Plato were here today, he would argue that our knowledge of Superman is based on the unchanging and eternal Superman found in the world of being. Philosophers struggled with Plato’s theory of essences for over 2000 years. No one really challenged the idea itself until Ludwig Wittgenstein changed the rules of the game in his enormously influential Philosophical Investigations, published after his death in 1953. Wittgenstein suggests that at least sometimes it does not make sense to look for (...) a thing’s essence. The different versions of Superman share a family resemblance much like games do. Rather than trying to identify the one true essence of Superman, one can simply say that a candidate for being Superman must have enough of the typical Superman characteristics, though not necessarily all of them or any one in particular. (shrink)

‘...if you learn to think like Peter Cave – with freshness, humour, objectivity and penetration – you will have been amply rewarded.’ :::: Prof. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, University of Notre Dame __________________ Chapter Titles:>>> ___ 1 Lao Tzu: The Way to Tao >>> 2 Sappho: Lover >>> 3 Zeno of Elea: Tortoise Backer, Parmenidean Helper >>> 4 Gadfly: aka ‘Socrates’ >>> 5 Plato: Charioteer, Magnificent Footnote Inspirer – ‘Nobody Does It Better’ >>> 6 Aristotle: Earth-Bound, Walking >>> 7 Epicurus: Gardener, Curing (...) the Soul, Ably Assisted by Lucretius >>> 8 Avicenna: Flying Man, Unifier >>> 9 Descartes: With Princess, With Queen >>> 10 Spinoza: God-Intoxicated Atheist >>> 11 Leibniz: Monad Man >>> 12 Bishop Berkeley, ‘That Paradoxical Irishman’: Immaterialist, Tar-Water Advocate >>> 13 David Hume: The Great Infidel or Le Bon David >>> 14 Kant: Duty Calls, Categorically >>> 15 Schopenhauer: Pessimism With Flute >>> 16 John Stuart Mill: Utility Man, With Harriet, Soul-Mate >>> 17 Søren Kierkegaard: Who? >>> 18 Karl Marx: Hegelian, Freedom-Fighter >>> 19 Lewis Carroll: Curiouser and Curiouser >>> 20 Nietzsche: God-Slaying Jester, Trans-Valuer >>>> 21 Bertrand Russell: Radical, Aristocrat >>> 22 G. E. Moore: Common-Sense Defender, Bloomsbury’s Sage >>> 23 Heidegger: Hyphenater >>> 24 Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialist, Novelist, French >>> 25 Simone Weil: Refuser and Would-Be Rescuer >>> 26 Simone de Beauvoir: Situated, Protester, Feminist >>> 27 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Therapist >>> 28 Hannah Arendt: Controversialist, Journalist? >>> 29 Iris Murdoch: Attender >>> 30 Samuel Beckett: Not I >>>. (shrink)

Written in code under constant threat of battle, Wittgenstein's searing and illuminating diaries finally emerge in this first-ever English translation. During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, one of our foremost scholars of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualize the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, the (...) Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality, and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself. (shrink)

We argue that all general concepts are family resemblance concepts. These include concepts introduced by ostension, such as colour. Concepts of colour and of each of the specific colours are family resemblance concepts because similarities concerning an open-ended range of colour or of appearance features crop up and disappear. After discussing the notion of “same colour” and Wittgenstein's use of the phrase “our colours”, we suggest family resemblance concepts in one tradition can often be extended to family resemblance concepts in (...) another tradition, illustrated by Wittgenstein's use of the words Spiel and “game”. (shrink)

This chapter presents a question closely related to the problem of vagueness, because it looks like a paradigm of a philosophical question that is implicitly but not explicitly about thought and language. It is useful to look at some proposals and arguments from the vagueness debate, for two reasons. First, they show why the original question is hard, when taken at face value. Second, they show how semantic considerations play a central role in the attempt to answer it, even (...) though it is not itself a semantic question. Some philosophers deny the relevance of formal semantic theories to vague natural languages. Some contemporary metaphysicians appear to believe that they can safely ignore formal semantics and the philosophy of language because their interest is in a largely extra‐mental reality. Conceptions of logic and mathematics as somehow trivial or non‐substantial have not been vindicated by any clear explanation of the relevant sense of “trivial” or “non‐substantial.”. (shrink)

This book collects 13 papers that explore Wittgenstein's philosophy throughout the different stages of his career. The author writes from the viewpoint of critical rationalism. The tone of his analysis is friendly and appreciative yet critical. Of these papers, seven are on the background to the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Five papers examine different aspects of it: one on the philosophy of young Wittgenstein, one on his transitional period, and the final three on the philosophy of mature Wittgenstein, chiefly his (...) Philosophical Investigations. The last of these papers, which serves as the concluding chapter, concerns the analytical school of philosophy that grew chiefly under its influence. Wittgenstein’s posthumous Philosophical Investigations ignores formal languages while retaining the view of metaphysics as meaningless -- declaring that all languages are metaphysics-free. It was very popular in the middle of the twentieth century. Now it is passé. Wittgenstein had hoped to dissolve all philosophical disputes, yet he generated a new kind of dispute. His claim to have improved the philosophy of life is awkward just because he prevented philosophical discussion from the ability to achieve that: he cut the branch on which he was sitting. This, according to the author, is the most serious critique of Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Editorial preface to the fourth edition and modified translation -- The text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen -- Philosophische untersuchungen = Philosophical investigations -- Philosophie der psychologie, ein fragment = Philosophy of psychology, a fragment.

This article undertakes a comparison between Wittgenstein's philosophy of the early and late periods with the musical theories of Wittgenstein's contemporary, Heinrich Schenker, an influential Viennese theorist of tonality, as well as those of their contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. Schenker's reductive analytical procedure was designed to unveil fundamental and uniform ways in which all works of music function, unfolding a deep structure constituting their essence. Schoenberg deplored this line of thought, and for reasons strikingly parallel to those that led Wittgenstein back (...) to what he called the ‘rough ground’ in his Philosophical Investigations. Ultimately, for Wittgenstein, the abstracted picture of the musical work as a platonic entity is nourished by grammatical conflations as well as by the Platonic and Cartesian legacies. (shrink)

Wittgenstein conceived of philosophy as an activity rather than a subject. Thus, his work is highly relevant to the contemporary philosophical counseling movement. This paper explores the ways in which his views on how to do philosophy shed light on how we can approach philosophical counseling. First, Witgenstein's anti-theoretical approach to conceptual analysis highlights the dangers of interpreting clients? symptoms in light of theory. Second, his notion that "pictures hold us captive" underscores the need to help clients recognize (...) unfounded assumptions underlying their apparent dilemmas. Finally, Wittgenstein's Socratic conception of philosophy as a means to lead an authentic life shows the value of philosophizing beyond the confines of the academy. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is a composite review of three intriguing and provocative books that address the interconnections between East Asian and Western philosophy. Firstly, in _Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding: Toward a New Cultural Flesh_, Kwok-Ying Lau thinks that phenomenology can help construct a “cultural flesh” between civilizations that encourages East-West philosophical dialogues, and that China needs to adopt Western terminology to facilitate an intercultural engagement. Merleau-Ponty’s “inter-world” can help this bridge. Secondly, in _Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy_, Lin Ma and (...) Jaap van Brakel argue that Chinese thinkers of the modern world invent “Chinese philosophy” in order to engage with Western thought. In a distinct fashion, they incorporate a Wittgenstein-inspired scenario whereby the necessary precondition for comparative intercultural philosophy is the “attitude-toward-a-soul principle” alongside the “family resemblance principle” which includes the “no need to speak the same language principle” or no need for one tradition to adopt another’s terminology. Thirdly, in _Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought_, Eric S. Nelson proposes that intertextual analysis opens multi-dimensional spaces of interpretation to situate changing views of East-West encounters in Germany ranging from Hegel and Kant to Buber and Heidegger. Daoism, Confucianism, Chan and Zen Buddhism are sites for examination by Western thinkers that open portals to East Asian culture and philosophy. (shrink)

In Philosophical Essays concerning Human Families, Stanley Vodraska describes a principle of moral practice that he calls “the principle of familial preference.” The essays examine this principle in practices of love or charity, mercy, justice, and prudence, as well as in religion, morals, and politics.

It is argued that Wittgenstein was a greatly misunderstood philosopher, both as regards his own philosophical views and his ideas about philosophical method. O. K. Bouwsma's interpretation of Wittgenstein is used to illustrate the most common misunderstandings.

This article first surveys the established views on Wittgenstein's relation to analytic philosophy. Next it distinguishes among different ways of defining analytic philosophy—topical, doctrinal, methodological, stylistic, historical, and the idea that it is a family‐resemblance concept. It argues that while certain stylistic features are important, the historical and the family‐resemblance conceptions are the most auspicious, especially in combination. The answer to the title question is given in section 3. Contrary to currently popular “irrationalist” interpretations, Wittgenstein was an analytic philosopher in (...) all phases of his career, albeit an exceedingly exotic one whose style transcends the limits of academic philosophy in general. On the historical understanding he qualifies because he was influenced by and in turn influenced mainly analytic philosophers. On the family‐resemblance conception he qualifies both because he developed and employed logico‐linguistic analysis and because he initiated the linguistic turn and the distinction between philosophy and science that characterizes one important strand in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Zettel is a collection of fragments which Wittgenstein cut from various of his typescripts and preserved for future use. More than half of the fragments were written in the years 1946-1948, after the completion of Part I and before the composition of Part II of the Philosophical Investigations. This collection may therefore be regarded as a companion volume to the Investigations, adding to both the scope and the Unity of Wittgenstein′s chef d′oeuvre. The fragments were kept in a box (...) and were not strictly ordered. Many have marks showing changes and improvements made after they were cut from the typescripts; some have remarks added in handwriting. Editing the collection for publication was thus a task of considerable difficulty. Since Zettel was first published, further research has been carried out on the fragments and minute comparisons have been made with their typescript and manuscript sources, revealing certain inaccuracies and misinterpretations in the first editing of the work. The second edition corrects these shortcomings and includes new explanatory footnotes; a detailed index, compiled by Stephen Amdur, has also been added. (shrink)

The ethical theories employed in health care today assume, in the main, a modern Western philosophical framework. Yet the diversity of cultural and religious assumptions regarding human nature, health and illness, life and death, and the status of the individual suggest that a cross-cultural study of health care ethics is needed. A Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Health Care Ethics provides this study. It shows that ethical questions can be resolved by examining the ethical principles present in each culture, critically assessing (...) each value, and identifying common values found within all traditions, It encourages the development of global awareness and sensitivity to and respect for the diversity of peoples and their values and will advance understanding as well as help to foster a greater balance and a fuller truth in consideration of the human condition and what makes for health and wholeness. (shrink)

Introduction -- Building blocks -- The old way of thinking -- The new way -- Grammar and philosophy -- The grammar of mathematics -- The grammar of experience -- The grammar of psychology -- Part II -- What does it all mean?

System Requirements System requirements Minimum 80486, 66MHz IBM PC or full compatible ; Minimum 16MB RAM 177MB hard disk space to store and run the Nachlass, an extra 12MB in addition to this should be available during installation. SVGA monitor set to 800x600 pixels, 16-bit colour, or higher setting recommended to use and display the transcription text and facsimiles; Quad-speed CD-ROM drive or higher; Windows 3.1, 3.11; Windows 95/98; Windows NT 4.0; Windows 2000. Microsoft mouse or compatible Network versions Windows (...) NT 4, and Novell networks. Customers with Wide Area Networks should ring Customer Services to discuss specific requirements. Customer Service Contact: Customer Services, Electronic Publishing Tel: +44 1865 267979 Fax: +44 1865 267990 Email: ep.info@oup.co.uk. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the three interpretations of sections 65-67 in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, where he answers the question “do we call different things by the same word because of a common feature?” Interpretation A holds that we call different things by the same word because of overlapping similarities between them; Interpretation B adopts a socio-historical reading, where concepts evolved and extended historically on the basis of some similarities; and interpretation C includes aspects of the first two interpretations, (...) but sees similarities as just one of several kinds of relations and affinities between concepts which explain why we call different things by the same word. Through an investigation of Wittgenstein’s answer and the objections made to interpretation A, I argue that interpretation C, although not prominent in the secondary literature, provides better answers to the objections raised. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's surviving notebooks serve to show what problems were occupying him in connection with many of the paragraphs of the Tractatus which are found in them as a first draft. They serve as a testimony to the thought processes of the Austrian philosopher.

Robert Holub’s book, Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism, fundamentally concerns two topics: Was Nietzsche the man anti-Jewish? Was he somehow responsible for inspiring anti-Semites and particularly fascists and Nazis? These are different issues—one of biography, the other of reception—and Holub would have been advised not to link them in a single volume. Nonetheless, one reason for the connection is immediately evident. Holub distinguishes between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, separating them before discussing their interplay. He conceives the first as (...) a nationalist political movement opposed to Jews, and the second as prejudices against Jews at a personal level.... (shrink)

THE TITLE W. used the title 'Philosophische Untersuchungen, Versuch einer Umar- beitung' as the heading of his 1936 revision of Br. B. in Vol. ...

This volume, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Wittgenstein's death, brings together thirteen of Crispin Wright's most influential essays on Wittgenstein ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 255-259 [Access article in PDF] Illnesses and Likenesses Richard G. T. Gipps IN THIS RESPONSE to Neil Pickering's paper I shall focus only on what he describes as the "strong objection" to the typical use of the likeness argument. The likeness argument, to recap, has it that we can decide whether conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, or alcoholism do or do not deserve (...) the designation of illness depending on whether they possess features which, if they occurred in physical conditions, would enable one to decide for or against the designation. To take an implausible example, if it were decided that it would be enough to describe a physical condition as an illness if it involves pain not caused through injury, then a psychological condition would be appropriately described as an illness just to the extent that it too involved such pain.In arguing against typical deployments of the likeness argument, Pickering finds that it is only on questionable initial descriptions of psychological conditions that such conditions appear to share the features that, in physical conditions, would be taken to be indicative of illness. That is to say, theorists who deploy the likeness argument to urge either the reality or unreality of mental illnesses typically presuppose what both we and they had all along hoped would be demonstrated in their argument. In terms of the above example, we might say that a certain psychological condition can count as an illness if it involves psychic pain. The concept of psychic pain is however (so the argument would have it) contestable; there exist other descriptions that make no reference to pain and in so doing fail to provide what a user of the likeness argument would need to substantiate the claim that a conception of the condition as an illness is more than a façon de parler.By way of arriving at this conclusion the following precondition for the applicability of the likeness argument (Pickering's "assumption" (2)) is insisted on: "That, with respect to the presence or absence of [those features of conditions which features decide whether or not the conditions are illnesses], a condition such as schizophrenia [must be] describable independently of the category it is assigned to." This can seem a quite reasonable restriction, for—it could be said—one can only win an argument if it is first allowed that there is actually something to argue about. That is, it is only if both partisans and detractors of the illness conception first accept a certain description of schizophrenia as spelling out what schizophrenia essentially involves that they can then progress to determining whether or not such a condition so described is or is not an illness.Yet, whereas this seems like a perfectly reasonable requirement, it is I believe uncertain whether it will always capture the form of the intuitions of adherents and detractors of the illness conception—or of the form of philosophical arguments more generally. To be sure, some philosophical discussions can perhaps be reconstructed as debates about the validity of certain inferences [End Page 255] from mutually understood premises (i.e., given X, does Y follow or not?). Yet if this were the case, then genuinely interesting philosophical arguments would probably be few and far between. If we are agreed as to the precise significance of our premises, and are not furthermore just making straightforward mistakes in reasoning, it is hard to see how or why we could all fail to arrive at the same conclusions.In the Philosophical Investigations paragraph 128 Wittgenstein wrote that "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to question them, because everyone would agree to them" (Wittgenstein 1953). Now that proposition might seem on rather weak grounds, because all one has to do to actually disprove it is merely disagree with it. But presumably Wittgenstein is rather articulating his intuition that although philosophical arguments often take the form of clashes concerning what conclusions can be drawn from what premises, most of their substance comes from a prior failure to unpack the intrinsic significance... (shrink)

This five-volume German-English edition presents, for the first time, new translations of all of Wittgenstein's mature 1937-1944 writings on mathematics and logic. The first (1956) and third (1978) editions of Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics omitted, unsystematically, more than half of Wittgenstein's later writings on mathematics; for that reason, the reader will here read some entire manuscripts for the first time, and other manuscripts for the first time as unabridged, sustained pieces of writing. Philosophers and other interested readers (...) will gain fresh insight into Wittgenstein's perspectives on a wide range of topics, from Gödelian propositions and the Cantorian conception of real numbers to the nature of mathematical propositions and the diversity of proof techniques. Other subjects covered include: mathematical sense; axioms and self-evidence; prudish proofs; the functionality of extra-mathematical application; undecided mathematical conjectures; rule-governed unwinding; and G. H. Hardy's conceptions and claim. (shrink)

Zettel, an en face bilingual edition, collects fragments from Wittgenstein's work between 1929 and 1948 on issues of the mind, mathematics, and language.

Whither the philosophy of intuition?Herman Cappelen’s Philosophy Without Intuitions (PWI) is a novel study in philosophical sociology—or, as Cappelen at one point suggests, “intellectual anthropology” (96).All undated references are to Cappelen (2012). Its target is the thesis that intuition is central, in the descriptive sense that contemporary analytic philosophers rely on intuitions for evidence—or, more generally, positive epistemic status. Cappelen labels the target thesis Centrality.If Centrality is true, then especially urgent are two questions in the rapidly growing field that (...) is the philosophy of intuition:[Q1] What are intuitions?[Q2] Can intuitions serve as evidence?There are of course others, but in chapter one Cappelen singles out these two as The Burning Questions about intuition. He then summarizes the overall upshot of PWI as follows:In this book I argue that Centrality, on any reasonable interpretation, is false. If you share that view, the Burning Questions will no lo .. (shrink)