Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (Volume 3 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations), Part 1: Essays

by P. M. S. Hacker

Overview

Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind is the third volume of a four-volume analytical commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, consisting of two parts. Part 1 is a sequence of fifteen essays that examine in detail all the major topics discussed in Philosophical Investigations §§243-427. These include the private language arguments, privacy, private ostensive definition, the nature of the mind, the inner and the outer, behaviour and behaviourism, thought, imagination, the self, consciousness, and criteria. Published in 1990 to widespread acclaim as a scholarly tour de force, the first edition of this volume of essays provides a comprehensive survey of these themes, the history of their treatment in early modern and modern philosophy, the development of Wittgenstein's ideas on these subjects from 1929 onwards, and an elaborate analysis of his definitive arguments in the Investigations.

The new second edition has been thoroughly revised by the author and features four new essays. These include a survey of the evolution of the private language arguments in Wittgenstein's oeuvre and their role within the developing argument of the Investigations, a comprehensive essay on private ownership of experience and its pitfalls, a detailed examination and defence of Wittgenstein's repudiation of subjective knowledge of one's experience, and an overview of the achievement and importance of the private language arguments. Revised essays examine new objections to Wittgenstein's arguments – which are found wanting– and incorporate new materials from the Nachlass that were not known to exist in 1990. All references have been adjusted to the revised fourth edition of the Investigations, but previous pagination in the first and second editions has been retained in parentheses.

These revisions bring the book up to the high standard of the extensively revised editions of Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell, 2005) and Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Wiley Blackwell, 2009). They ensure that this survey of Wittgenstein's private language arguments and of his accounts of thought, imagination, consciousness, the self, and criteria will remain the essential reference work on the Investigations for the foreseeable future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118951804
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	06/10/2019
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

P. M. S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is author of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (1980-96), the first two volumes co-authored with G.P. Baker, and of the epilogue Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). He has written extensively on philosophy and neuroscience—Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003) and History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Wiley Blackwell, 2008), both co-authored with M.R. Bennett. He has published three volumes of a tetralogy on human nature: Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007), The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature (Wiley Blackwell, 2013), and The Passions: A Study of Human Nature (Wiley Blackwell, 2018). He is currently completing the final volume – The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature (forthcoming). Together with Joachim Schulte, he has produced the fourth edition and extensively revised translation of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Wiley Blackwell, 2009). They are currently working on a new edition and translation of Wittgenstein's On Certainty.

Table of Contents

Note to the second edition: Part I: Essays xi

Acknowledgements to the first edition xv

Acknowledgements to the second edition xvii

Introduction to Part I: Essays xxi

Abbreviations xxv

I Introduction to the private language arguments 1

1. The Augustinian conception of language and Wittgenstein’s early commitments 1

2. The place of the private language arguments in the Philosophical Investigations 9

3. The Great Tradition and its long shadow 13

4. From grammatical trivialities to metaphysical mysteries 16

5. The dialectic of the mental 21

II Only I can have 25

1. The traditional picture and its predicaments 25

2. Private ownership 28

3. Dispelling conceptual illusions and confusions 33

III Only I can know 41

1. The roots of the problem 41

2. Wittgenstein’s response to the classical conception 46

3. Wittgenstein’s sketchy account of knowledge 50

4. The cognitive network: connective analysis 54

5. A different route: the functions of the verb ‘to know’ 57

6. The temptations of the received view resisted 60

7. Further objections rebutted 64

IV Private ostensive definition 69

1. A ‘private’ language 69

2. Names, ostensive definitions and samples — a reminder 73

3. The vocabulary of a private language 76

4. Idle wheels 85

V Men, minds and machines 89

1. Human beings, their parts and their bodies 89

2. The mind 94

3. Only in the stream of life … 97

4. Homunculi and brains 100

5. Can machines think? 102

VI Avowals and descriptions 113

1. Descriptions of subjective experience 113

2. Descriptions 115

3. Natural expression 117

4. A spectrum of cases 121

VII Behaviour and behaviourism 127

1. Behaviourism in psychology and philosophy 127

2. Wittgenstein: first reactions 134

3. Crypto‐behaviourism? 142

4. Body and behaviour 146

VIII Knowledge of other minds: the inner and the outer 153

1. Semi‐solipsism 153

2. Inside and outside 155

3. The indeterminacy of the mental 161

IX An overview of the achievement of the private language arguments 167

1. An overview 167

2. Fundamental insights 173

3. Fidelity to philosophical methodology 180

4. Consequences and confusions 185

X Thinking: methodological muddles and categorical confusions 191

1. Thinking: a muddle elevated to a mystery 191

2. Methodological clarifications 194

3. Activities of the mind 196

4. Processes in the mind 202

XI Thinking: the soul of language 207

1. The strategic role of the argument 207

2. The dual‐process conception 212

3. Thought, language and the mastery of linguistic skills 219

4. Making a radical break 225

XII Images and the imagination 229

1. Landmarks 229

2. Seeing, imagining and mental images 236

3. Images and pictures 239

4. Visual images and visual impressions 243

5. Imagination, intention and the will 247

XIII I and my self 251

1. Historical antecedents 251

2. ‘The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious’ 255

3. The eliminability of the word ‘I’ 260

4. ‘“I” does not refer to a person’ 264

XIV The world of consciousness 271

1. The world as consciousness 271

2. The gulf between consciousness and body 275

3. The certainty of consciousness 281

XV Criteria 285

1. Symptoms and hypotheses 285

2. Symptoms and criteria 290

3. Further problems about criteria 295

4. Evidence, knowledge and certainty 301

Index 307

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In the exegesis of Wittgenstein, Peter Hacker’s work is pre-eminent.  This revised edition of Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind shows him capable of surpassing even himself.  Through the deepening of his own understanding and appreciation of Wittgenstein’s arguments comes a deepening of the reader’s. The result is exhilarating.”

Professor Adrian Moore, University of Oxford

“The Baker/Hacker commentary remains by far the most important and most impressive scholarly work on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. This revised edition of Hacker's Volume 3 incorporates some illuminating new material in the exegetical part and contains four excellent new essays on the private language argument. Required reading for anyone seriously interested in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind.”

Professor Severin Schroeder, University of Reading