Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning

Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
Author: James Conant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107194156

Provides new interpretations and applications of Wittgenstein's philosophy in relation to fundamental issues in contemporary theoretical debates.

Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning

Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
Author: James Conant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781316645406

This volume of new essays presents groundbreaking interpretations of some of the most central themes of Wittgenstein's philosophy. A distinguished group of contributors demonstrates how Wittgenstein's thought can fruitfully be applied to contemporary debates in epistemology, metaphilosophy and philosophy of language. The volume combines historical and systematic approaches to Wittgensteinian methods and perspectives, with essays providing detailed analysis that will be accessible to students as well as specialists. The result is a rich and illuminating picture of a key figure in twentieth-century philosophy and his continuing importance to philosophical study.

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

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.

Rails to Infinity

Rails to Infinity
Author: Crispin Wright
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780674005044

This volume, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Wittgenstein's death, brings together thirteen of Crispin Wright's most influential essays on Wittgenstein's later philosophies of language and mind, many hard to obtain, including the first publication of his Whitehead Lectures given at Harvard in 1996. Organized into four groups, the essays focus on issues about following a rule and the objectivity of meaning; on Saul Kripke's contribution to the interpretation of Wittgenstein; on privacy and self-knowledge; and on aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. Wright uses the cutting edge of Wittgenstein's thought to expose and undermine the common assumptions in platonistic views of mathematical and logical objectivity and Cartesian ideas about self-knowledge. The great question remains: How to react to the demise of these assumptions? In response, the essays develop a concerted, evolving approach to the possibilities--and limitations--of constructive philosophies of mathematics and mind. Their collection constitutes a major statement by one of Britain's most important philosophers--and will provide an indispensable tool both for students of Wittgenstein and for scholars working more generally in the metaphysics of mind and language.

Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy (Routledge Revivals)

Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Paul Johnston
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317678737

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy.

Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein
Author: S HOLTZMAN
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317831292

First published in 2005. The essays and replies in this volume represent, with some modifications, the proceedings of a colloquium held in Oxford in Trinity Term, 1979. With occasional exceptions, critical response to the Philosophical Investigations following publication focused on a limited range of topics - an unsystematic book was discussed in an unsystematic fashion. This book employs a different approach, one that interprets disconnected discussions of Wittgenstein's as united by a single underlying set of powerful arguments.

Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein
Author: James C. Klagge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2001-08-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521008686

A collection of essays exploring the relationship between Wittgenstein's life and his philosophy.

Wittgenstein and Naturalism

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

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.

Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy

Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy
Author: Oswald Hanfling
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791400708

"Philosophy," wrote Wittgenstein, "simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything." Hanfling takes seriously Wittgenstein's declaration of what he was doing, emphasizing Wittgenstein's rejection of theory and explanation in favor of 'description alone.' He demonstrates the importance of Wittgenstein's philosophy to long-standing problems about language, knowledge, the mind, and philosophy itself. The book exposes common misunderstandings about Wittgenstein, and examines in detail the celebrated 'private language' argument.