Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures contains previously unpublished notes from lectures given by Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1938 and 1941. The volume offers new insight into the development of Wittgenstein’s thought and includes some of the finest examples of Wittgenstein’s lectures in regard to both content and reliability.

Peter Munz, a former student of both Popper and Wittgenstein, begins his comparison of the two great twentieth-century philosophers, by explaining that since the demise of positivism there have emerged, broadly speaking, two philosophical options: Wittgenstein, with the absolute relativism of his theory that meaning is a function of language games and that social configurations are determinants of knowledge; and Popper’s evolutionary epistemology – conscious knowledge is a special case of the relationship which exists between all living beings and (...) their environments. Professor Munz examines and rejects the Wittgensteinian position. Instead, _Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge_, first published in 1985, elaborates the potentially fruitful link between Popper’s critical rationalism and Neo-Darwinism. Read in the light of the latter, Popper’s philosophy leads to the transformation of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism into ‘Hypothetical Realism’, whilst the emphasis on the biological orientation of Popper’s thought helps to illumine some difficulties in Popper’s ‘falsificationism’. (shrink)

The late Peter Munz contributed this essay to Liberty, Authority, Formality, ed. John Morrow & Jonathan Scott (Imprint Academic, 2008) and it is reprinted here by permission of the author's widow.

"Munz argues that the later Wittgenstein and Popper ought to be seen as complementing one another. Popper believed that when truth is discovered meaning will take care of itself. However, since, in Popper's view, we can never verify a general proposition, we can never be certain of its truth. There must therefore be a way of understanding what it means even though we cannot be sure of its truth. The post-Tractatus Wittgenstein enables us to see how propositions are meaningful (...) regardless of whether we can ascertain their truth and thus fills a gap in Popper's philosophy." "At the same time, Popper was able to make up a deficiency in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. While Wittgenstein had had it that meaningful propositions can be generated in any social order, Popper showed that if propositions are to be true as well as have meaning, the socio-political order in which they are put forward, has to be free and open.". (shrink)

Philosophers have not taken the evolution of human beings seriously enough. If they did, argues Peter Munz, many long standing philosophical problems would be resolved. One of philosophical concequences of biology is that all the knowledge produced in evolution is a priori, i.e., established hypothetically by chance mutation and selective retention, not by observation and intelligent induction. For organisms as embodied theories, selection is natural and for theories as disembodied organisms, it is artificial. Following Popper, the growth of knowledge (...) is seen to be continuous from the amoeba to Einstein'. Philosophical Darwinism throws a whole new light on many contemporary debates. It has damaging implications for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and questions attempts from within biology to reduce mental events to neural processes. More importantly, it provides a rational postmodern alternative to what the author argues are the unreasonable postmodern fashions of Kuhn, Lyotard and Rorty. (shrink)

While the ethics and the sociology of The Open Society can stand up to criticism after 50 years, it is argued that Popper's thesis that closed societies are prompted and promoted by "historicism" cannot. Moreover, Popper's conceptions of "historicism" and of "developmental law" are based on a misunderstanding of our knowledge of history, the practice of historical writing, and the discipline of sociology. In conclusion there is an attempt to explain why, of all people Popper ever criticized for their historicism, (...) Darwin alone was singled out by him for exoneration. (shrink)

Challenges most current thinking about consciousness and mind by subjecting neuroscience and cognitive science to philosophical analysis.

Transparencies (1) We used to stick them on window-panes Starting with butterflies. Later We found more momentous scenes Mandalas — ziggurats — Jesus. ...

The volume takes on the much-needed task of describing and explaining the nature of the relations and interactions between mind, language and action in defining mentality. Papers by renowned philosophers unravel what is increasingly acknowledged to be the enacted nature of the mind, memory and language-acquisition, whilst also calling attention to Wittgenstein's contribution. The volume offers unprecedented insight, clarity, scope, and currency.

Bewusstsein, Außenwelt und Sprache bilden eine untrennbare Einheit in der Frage nach dem Sinn und der Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke. Zeichen und ihre Verwendung lassen sich daher weder durch rein internalistische Bewusstseinsanalysen noch durch rein externalistische Gegenstandsbezüge angemessen rekonstruieren. Daher befinden sich Bedeutungen weder „innerhalb" noch „außerhalb" des Kopfes. Unterschiedliche Gebrauchsweisen und somit Bedeutungen spiegeln sich vielmehr in der Fähigkeit wieder, sprachliche Zeichen zu verstehen und auf unsere subjektiven Erlebnisse sowie die uns umgebende Welt anzuwenden. Volker Munz zeigt, inwieweit sowohl (...) rein phänomenale als auch rein physikalistische Interpretationsansätze zu kurz greifen, die Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke zu bestimmen. Beide Positionen stehen nicht in Widerstreit zueinander, sondern ergänzen einander vielmehr in der Bestimmung des Sinnes und der Bedeutung sprachlicher Zeichen. Sowohl externalistische Semantiken (Putnams Zwillingserde, Kripkes Marsianer, Davidsons Sumpfmann etc.) als auch internalistische Positionen (Locke, Thomas Nagel, Jackson etc.) werden anhand spezifischer Gedankenexperiment kritisch auf ihre Rolle und Schlüssigkeit hin überprüft und mit alternativen Gedankenszenarios konfrontiert. Neben den genannten Autoren werden auch Russell, Frege und insbesondere Wittgenstein ausführlich diskutiert. (shrink)