Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Author: Stuart Shanker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780415149167

Wittgenstein scholarship has continued to grow at a pace few could have anticipated - a testament both to the fertility of his thought and to the thriving state of contemporary philosophy. In response to this ever-growing interest in the field, we are delighted to announce the publication of a second series of critical assessments on Wittgenstein, emphasising both the breadth and depth of contemporary Wittgenstein research.As well as papers on the nature and method of Wittgenstein's philosophy, this second collection also relates to a broader range of topics, including psychology, politics, art, music and culture.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
Author: Meredith Williams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780742541917

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is one of the great works of 20th Century philosophy, destined to join the philosophical canon. Like all great works of philosophy, it poses new problems, while creating new forms of argument and persuasion. But unlike most contemporary philosophy texts, it is not structured by chapter and section headings, but rather by numbered passages -- evidence of Wittgenstein's distinctive style and profound originality. This anthology draws together in one volume several recent essays that help to make his problems and arguments more accessible. The essays are grouped into four sections that roughly correspond to the development that one finds in the Investigations. These sections are: reference and meaning; rules and their application; the interiority of mind, and the alleged uses of private languages; and necessity and grammar. Both readers who are new to the Investigations as well as those who are familiar with Wittgenstein's work should find these essays illuminating and engaging.

The Concept of Intelligence

The Concept of Intelligence
Author: Ira Altman
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 108
Release: 1997
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780761807377

Taking on a small part of the larger issue waged between dualists and materialists, the author presents an analysis of intelligence that supports Gilbert Ryle's analysis while exposing the limits that exist between the application of the concept of intelligence and other mental conduct concepts. Topics include the criteria of intelligence; Holloway's definition; intelligent success and change success; intelligence, reflexes, and tropisms; intelligence and instincts, learning, habit, and training ; purpose and intelligent action; style setting dispositions, exemplaries, and occasions; the minds of machines; Turing's analysis; the intelligence of computers; differences between machines and man; inductive and deductive reasoning; and the autonomous machine. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Philosophy and Philosophers

Philosophy and Philosophers
Author: John Shand
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317488156

This revised and updated edition of a standard work provides a clear and authoritative survey of the Western tradition in metaphysics and epistemology from the Presocratics to the present day. Aimed at the beginning student, it presents the ideas of the major philosophers and their schools of thought in a readable and engaging way, highlighting the central points in each contributor's doctrines and offering a lucid discussion of the next-level details that both fills out the general themes and encourages the reader to pursue the arguments still further through a detailed guide to further reading. Whether John Shand is discussing the slow separation of philosophy and theology in Augustine, Aquinas and Ockham, the rise of rationalism, British empiricism, German idealism or the new approaches opened up by Russell, Sartre and Wittgenstein, he combines succinct but insightful exposition with crisp critical comment. This new edition will continue to provide students with a valuable work of initial reference.

Believing and Acting

Believing and Acting
Author: G. Scott Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199583900

How should religion and ethics be studied if we want to understand what people believe and why they act the way they do? An energetic guide to the study of religion and ethics, rejecting theories from postmodernism and cognitive science in favour of a return to pragmatic enquiry.

Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays

Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays
Author: P.F. Strawson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2008-08-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134060866

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. First published thirty years ago but long since unavailable, Freedom and Resentment collects some of Strawson's most important work and is an ideal introduction to his thinking on such topics as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics. Beginning with the title essay Freedom and Resentment, this invaluable collection is testament to the astonishing range of Strawson's thought as he discusses free will, ethics and morality, logic, the mind-body problem and aesthetics. The book is perhaps best-known for its three interrelated chapters on perception and the imagination, subjects now at the very forefront of philosophical research. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Paul Snowdon and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson.

The Rhetoric of Failure

The Rhetoric of Failure
Author: Ewa P?onowska Ziarek
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791427118

'This book makes a significant and needed contribution to post-structural philosophy and literary theory. In this impressive analysis that delicately weaves together philosophical and literary texts, Ewa Ziarek powerfully and persuasively demonstrates that the rhetoric of the failure of traditional subject-centered rationality does not lead to nihilism or nominalism.'-Kelly Oliver, University of Texas at Austin

The Matter of High Words

The Matter of High Words
Author: Robert Chodat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2017-08-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0190682167

In a world of matter, how can we express what matters? When the explanations of the natural sciences become powerfully precise and authoritative, what is the status of our highest words, the languages that articulate our norms and orient our lives? The Matter of High Words examines a constellation of American writers who in the decades since World War II have posed these questions in distinctive ways. Walker Percy, Marilynne Robinson, Ralph Ellison, Stanley Cavell, and David Foster Wallace are all self-consciously post-WWII authors, attuned to the fragmentation and skepticism that have defined so much of the literary and critical culture of the last century and more. Yet they also attempt to reach back to older forms of thought and writing that are often thought to have dried up-the traditions of prophecy, of wisdom literature, of the sage. Working within this dual inheritance, these authors are drawn equally to both art and argument, "showing" and "telling," shifting continually between narrative and discursive genres. In their essays they act as moralists, promoting the broad, abstract concepts that might inspire action in the face of naturalistic reduction: community, family, courage, fraternity, marriage, friendship, temperance, judgment. In their narratives, they offer particular lives in particular settings, thick descriptions that give flesh to such high words. Rarely do these movements between genres generate a tidy equilibrium; where their essays speak of cooperation and redemption, their narratives display alienation, loss, and failure. But in pursuing such risky, unorthodox strategies, these postwar sages are not only able to challenge some of the dominant naturalistic theories of the last several decades: cognitive science, neo-Darwinian theory, social science, the fact-value divide in analytic philosophy. Through five chapters of detailed analysis and close reading, Chodat explores the question of whether vocabularies of ought and ought-not can still emerge today, and how these concepts might be embodied, and whether such ideas might be found in things.