Wittgenstein's On Certainty: Insight and Method

Wittgenstein's On Certainty: Insight and Method
Author: Robert Greenleaf Brice
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre:
ISBN: 9783030907822

This book considers the important twentieth century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his conception of certainty. In his work entitled On Certainty, Wittgenstein provides not only a brilliant solution to a previously intractable philosophical problem, but also the elements of an entirely new way of approaching this and similar longstanding, apparently unresolvable, problems. In On Certainty, he re-conceives the problem of radical skepticism-the claim that we can never really be certain of anything except the contents of our own minds-as a kind of philosophical "disease" of thought. His approach to the problem, which is emphasized in the book, is similar to the treatment of disease, has two main goals: (1) bring about an awareness in the philosopher that this kind of extreme skepticism is not a methodological approach to be taken seriously, and, with this awareness, (2) an attempt to replace this radical skepticism with a practical, Common Sense framework. Implicit in Wittgenstein's approach are a number of strategies found in a contemporary approach to psychotherapy known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). These strategies, along with philosophical methods and scientific practices rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense, seek to diagnose and treat irrational thoughts and beliefs that often emerge (and re-emerge) in the discipline of philosophy. The aim of this book, then, is to provide students of philosophy with the tools necessary to adjust and reshape these irrational, self-defeating thoughts and beliefs into something new, something healthy.

Wittgenstein's On Certainty: Insight and Method

Wittgenstein's On Certainty: Insight and Method
Author: Robert Greenleaf Brice
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030907813

This book considers the important twentieth century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his conception of certainty. In his work entitled On Certainty, Wittgenstein provides not only a brilliant solution to a previously intractable philosophical problem, but also the elements of an entirely new way of approaching this and similar longstanding, apparently unresolvable, problems. In On Certainty, he re-conceives the problem of radical skepticism–the claim that we can never really be certain of anything except the contents of our own minds–as a kind of philosophical “disease” of thought. His approach to the problem, which is emphasized in the book, is similar to the treatment of disease, has two main goals: (1) bring about an awareness in the philosopher that this kind of extreme skepticism is not a methodological approach to be taken seriously, and, with this awareness, (2) an attempt to replace this radical skepticism with a practical, Common Sense framework. Implicit in Wittgenstein’s approach are a number of strategies found in a contemporary approach to psychotherapy known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). These strategies, along with philosophical methods and scientific practices rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense, seek to diagnose and treat irrational thoughts and beliefs that often emerge (and re-emerge) in the discipline of philosophy. The aim of this book, then, is to provide students of philosophy with the tools necessary to adjust and reshape these irrational, self-defeating thoughts and beliefs into something new, something healthy.

Wittgenstein's On Certainty

Wittgenstein's On Certainty
Author: Rush Rhees
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0470777060

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.

Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty
Author: D. Moyal-Sharrock
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2005-05-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230505341

This is the first collection of papers devoted to Ludwig Wittgenstein's cryptic but brilliant, On Certainty . This work, Wittgenstein's last, extends the thinking of his earlier, better known writings, and in so doing, makes the most important contribution to epistemology since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason - a claim the essays in this volume help to demonstrate. The essays have been grouped under four headings, reflecting current approaches to the work: the Framework, Transcendental, Epistemic, and Therapeutic readings.

Moore and Wittgenstein

Moore and Wittgenstein
Author: A. Coliva
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 023028969X

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

On Certainty

On Certainty
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1969-01
Genre: Certainty
ISBN: 9780631120001

The volume is full of thought-provoking insight which will prove a stimulus both to further study and to scholarly disagreement.

Philosophical Method in Wittgenstein's "On Certainty"

Philosophical Method in Wittgenstein's
Author: Brian Bruce Rogers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN: 9781124733234

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein aims to demotivate philosophical theorizing by examining the conditions under which philosophical puzzlement arises. His goal is to enact this `therapy' without advancing controversial philosophical theories himself. The implementation of this new methodology distinguishes the late Wittgenstein from the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. After completing work on the Investigations, Wittgenstein continued to write philosophical remarks, including those published in On Certainty, until his death in 1951. Recently, some interpreters have called for the recognition of a third phase of Wittgenstein's career associated with On Certainty, during which Wittgenstein purportedly lost interest in the therapeutic goals of his second phase and adopted a systematic approach to classical epistemological problems. In this dissertation I challenge the idea of a `third Wittgenstein' by arguing that Wittgenstein retained his therapeutic aims in On Certainty - although he was not always successful in fulfilling his methodological goals. A survey of Wittgenstein's correspondence reveals that he consistently criticized the quality of his writing throughout the year 1950. Yet in the spring of 1951, just weeks before his death, Wittgenstein reported that he had regained his philosophical capacities and was doing his best work in years. These fluctuations in Wittgenstein's assessment of his writing correspond to the dates he underwent cancer treatments that affected his cognitive abilities. The results of philological investigation show that the first half of On Certainty was written during Wittgenstein's self-critical phase, while the second half was written during his final weeks of satisfactory work. The early remarks of the book contain a response to G.E. Moore's attempt to refute skepticism that is based on a theory of `hinge propositions'. Later in the book Wittgenstein implements a more therapeutic, less dogmatic method in his treatment of Moore. By exploring the ways that Moore's philosophical assertions can be used in everyday contexts, Wittgenstein wishes to lead us to question whether we fully understand what Moore is trying to say. I argue that Wittgenstein was satisfied by this latter response to Moore because it fulfilled the therapeutic and anti-theoretical aims of his later philosophy.

How To Read Wittgenstein

How To Read Wittgenstein
Author: Ray Monk
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2019-03-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783785713

Though Wittgenstein wrote on the same subjects that dominate the work of other analytic philosophers - the nature of logic, the limits of language, the analysis of meaning - he did so in a peculiarly poetic style that separates his work sharply from that of his peers and makes the question of how to read him particularly pertinent. At the root of Wittgenstein's thought, Ray Monk argues, is a determination to resist the scientism characteristic of our age, a determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of non-scientific forms of understanding. The kind of understanding we seek in philosophy, Wittgenstein tried to make clear, is similar to the kind we might seek of a person, a piece of music, or, indeed, a poem. Extracts are taken from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and from a range of writings, including Philosophical Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology.

On Certainty

On Certainty
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1972-09-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0061316865

Written over the last 18 months of his life and inspired by his interest in G. E. Moore's defense of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

Exploring Certainty

Exploring Certainty
Author: Robert Greenleaf Brice
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2014-03-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 073917567X

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty explores a myriad of new and important ideas regarding our notions of belief, knowledge, skepticism, and certainty. During the course of his exploration, Wittgenstein makes a fascinating new discovery about certitude, namely, that it is categorically distinct from knowledge. As his investigation advances, he recognizes that certainty must be non-propositional and non-ratiocinated; borne out not in the things we say, but in our actions, our deeds. Many philosophers working outside of epistemology recognized Wittgenstein's insights and determined that his work's abrupt end might serve as an excellent launching point for still further philosophical expeditions. In Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought, Robert Greenleaf Bricesurveys some of this rich topography. Wittgenstein's writings serve as a point of departure for Brice's own ideas about certainty. He shows how Wittgenstein's rough and unpolished notion of certitude might be smoothed out and refined in a way to benefit studies of morality, aesthetics, cognitive science, philosophy of mathematics. Brice's work opens new avenues of thought for scholars and students of the Wittgensteinian tradition, while introducing original philosophies concerning issues central to human knowledge and cognition.