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

This third volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein′s Philosophical Investigations covers sections 243–427, which constitute the heart of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis. The thirteen essays cover all the major themes of this part of Wittgenstein′s masterpiece: the private language arguments, privacy, avowals and descriptions, private ostensive definition, criteria, minds and machines, behavior and behaviorism, the self, the inner and the outer, thinking, consciounesss, and the imagination. The exegesis clarifies and evaluates Wittgenstein′s arguments, drawing extensively on all the unpublished papers, examining the evolution of his ideas in manuscript sources and definitively settling many controversies about the interpretation of the published text.

This commentary, like its predecessors, is indispensable for the study of Wittgenstein and is essential reading for students of the philosophy of mind.

A fourth and final volume, entitled Wittgenstein: Mind and Will will complete the commentary.

Note to the paperback edition ix

Acknowledgements xi

Preface xiii

Abbreviations xviii

I The Private Language Arguments 1

1 Preliminaries

2 From grammatical truth to metaphysical theory

3 Deviations and dialectic

II Privacy 17

1 The traditional picture

2 Private ownership

3 Epistemic privacy

4 Only a first step

III Private Ostensive Definition 37

1 A private language

2 Names, ostensive definitions, and samples a reminder

3 The vocabulary of a private language

4 Idle wheels

IV Men, Minds, and Machines 59

1 Human beings and their parts

2 The mind

3 Only in the stream of life

4 Homunculi and brains

5 Can machines think?

V Avowals and descriptions 83

1 Descriptions of subjective experience

2 Descriptions

3 Natural expression

4 A spectrum of cases

VI Behavior and behaviourism 97

1 Behaviourism in psychology and philosophy

2 Wittgenstein: first reactions

3 Crypto=behaviorism?

4 Body and behavior

VII The Inner and the Outer 127

1 Semi–solipsism

2 Inside and outside

3 The indeterminacy of the mental

VIII Thinking: Methodological Muddles and Categorical Confusions 143

1 Thinking: a muddle elevated to a mystery

2 Methodological clarifications

3 Activities of the mind

4 Processes in the mind

IX Thinking: The Soul of Language 161

1 The strategic role of the argument

2 The dual–process conception

3 Thought, language, and the mastery of linguistic skills

4 Making a radical break

X Images and the Imagination 183

1 Landmarks

2 Seeing, imagining, and mental images

3 Images and pictures

4 Visual images and visual impressions

5 Imagination, intention, and the will

XI I and My Self 207

1 Historical antecedents

2 The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious

3 The eliminability of the word I

4 I does not refer to a person

XII The World of Consciousness 229

1 The world as consciousness

2 The gulf between consciousness and body

3 The certainty of consciousness

XIII Criteria 243

1 Symptoms and hypotheses

2 Symptoms and criteria

3 Further problems about criteria

4 Evidence, knowledge, and certainty

Index 268

P. M. S. Hacker is a Fellow of St. John′s College Oxford. He is author of Insight and Illusion and Appearance and Reality (Blackwell, 1987). He edited The Renaissance of Gravure: the Art of S. W. Hayter. He has written a number of books with G. P. Baker: Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell, 1980), Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Blackwell, 1985), Language, Sense and Nonsense (Blackwell, 1984) and Scepticism, Rules and Language (Blackwell, 1984).

On Volume 1 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations:

"Baker and Hacker skilfully conduct the reader through the tangles of controversy that surround the topics of sense and Meaning. They have an admirable grasp of the whole corpus of Wittgenstein′s writings, and they constantly display the sharp contrasts between Wittgenstein′s thought and currently influential ′scientific′ semantics." Norman Malcolm, Times Literacy Supplement

"For someone who wants to understand, point for point and in detail, how Wittgenstein′s later philosophy upsets the philosophies of Russell, Frege and the Tractatus, this is the book to read." Philosophical Books

On Volume 2: "The authors showed in the first volume that they had in fukll measure the combination of scholarship and philosophical excellence neede to expound and illuminate the intracies of the text. That combination is apparent on every page of the present work." B. Rundle, Philosophical Investigations