Wittgenstein's Copernican Revolution explores the relation between language and reality without embracing Linguistic Realism and without courting any form of Linguistic Idealism either. It argues that this is precisely what Wittgenstein does. This book also examines some well known contemporary philosophers who have been concerned with this same question.

The debate between free will and its opposing doctrine, determinism, is one of the key issues in philosophy. Ilham Dilman brings together all the dimensions of the problem of free will with examples from literature, ethics and psychoanalysis, and draws out valuable insights from both sides of the freedom-determinism divide. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to this highly important question and examines the contributions made by sixteen of the most outstanding thinkers from the time of early Greece to modern (...) times: Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Freud, Sartre, Weil, Wittgenstein, Moore. (shrink)

What is the place of human free will in our lives if all our actions are the result of some other cause? Does our processing unconscious beliefs or desires make us less free? Is our free will necessarily restricted if we do not choose our own beliefs? The debate between free will and its opposing doctrine, determinism, is one of the key issues in philosophy. _Free Will: An historical and philosophical introduction_ provides a comprehensive introduction to this highly important question (...) and examines the contributions made by sixteen of the most outstanding thinkers from the time of early Greece to the twentieth century: *Homer *Sophocles *Platto *Aristotle *St Augustine *St Thomas Aquinas *Descaartes *Spinoza *Hume *Kant *Schopehauer *Freud *Sartre *Weil *Wittgenstein *Moore Ilham Dilman brings together all the dimensions of the problem of free will with examples from literature, ethics and psychoanalysis. Drawing out valuable insights from both sides of the free will-determinism divide, and he provides an accessible and highly readable introduction to this perennial problem. (shrink)

If there is an inherent connection between love and generosity, between love and creativeness, as this book argues there is, then how can love itself be selfish, destructive and tyrannical? Concerned with questions about love in its different forms, this book seeks and discusses the views of writers--Plato, Proust, Sartre, Freud, D. H. Lawrence, Erich Fromm, C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Kahlil Gibran--who have suggested distinctive solutions to the problems which love poses in the face of its obstacles. (...) The enquiry which the book undertakes emcompasses both the conceptual and existential experience of love. (shrink)

JOHN WISDOM AND THE BREADTH OF PHILOSOPHY hham Dhman 1. THE ESSAYS IN THIS VOLUME The essays following the two pieces by John Wisdom have all been written by philosophers who are former students or friends of Wisdom or who have a high regard for his work. Their contributions were all written with him in mind and to be discussed at a conference honouring his work. This conference was held in August 1983 at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which Wisdom has (...) been a fellow since 1935. Wisdom is a master of discursive reasoning and one of his distinctive contributions in philosophy has been to examine its various forms and their interconnections, particularly the form it takes in philosophical inquiry and the way it advances our understanding there. His concern to bring out the links between all that is abstract in such reasoning and the concrete and particular is well known and represented in many of the essays in this volume. But Wisdom has also a deep appreciation of the kind of understanding that is advanced non-discursively. As he puts it in the first piece in this volume: However skilled a good critic 'I am sure that much of what makes "Hamlet" "Hamlet" will run between his fingers'. He has himself advanced our understanding on many questions in philosophy in this way, not simply by what he has said, but also by what he has suggested 'between the lines'. (shrink)

Among modern philosophers, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) has few rivals for his influence over the development of contemporary philosophy as a whole. While the issue of language has become a key fulcrum of continental philosophy since the twentieth century, Kant has been overlooked as a thinker whose breadth of insight has helped to spearhead this advance.

This is a reply to nielsen's discussion in "philosophical investigations" (vol. 3, No. 4, Fall 1980) of my two papers 'wisdom's philosophy of religion' ("c. J. P." dec. 1975). In it I attempt to correct some misunderstandings and reply to some criticisms regarding what I said in my papers about 'religious transcendence', 'the relation between religion and life', 'religious truth', 'religion and myth', 'experience of god', And 'philosophy and religious belief'.

Professor Phillips′s short paper ‘Ten Questions for Psycho-Analysis’ goes back a long time to 1964 or 65. The questions were originally directed to me after a paper I read to the Philosophical Society in Swansea. I have answered some of these questions in my books on Freud, though perhaps not to Phillips′s satisfaction. Here I shall try to do so again, however briefly.

I begin with a brief statement of wisdom's view of the nature of religious belief, its truth and the kind of reasoning to which it is amenable. i then try to disentangle the truth and falsity which, as i see it, this view contains. i agree that the believer and non-believer differ in the way they "see" things even when they do not differ in their expectations about an afterlife. i characterize this difference as "conceptual". i then discuss what it (...) means to speak of "truth" here and consider the kind of "reasoning" it is amenable to. (shrink)

Writing clearly and avoiding jargon, Dilman investigates Wittgenstein's understanding of the relation between language and reality - i.e. between "the realities" we refer to, speak about and try to understand. Dilman discusses this topic in depth and at the same time covers a broad ground. He appreciates the following different aspects: philosophical skepticism about the existence of the various categories of things and our knowledge of them, about the reality of the logic of the language we speak and of the (...) forms of our reasoning, philosophy's contribution to our understanding of the world and of ourselves, and the contributions of the arts to such an understanding. (shrink)

This article is concerned to say something about what the study of logic meant to wittgenstein. It is concerned to bring out why the kind of questions wittgenstein raised about logic and mathematics cannot be pursued in a purely formal and abstract manner-As russell pursued them to a very large extent. It tries to understand the prominence wittgenstein gave to a study of these questions in his philosophical investigations and to appreciate the sense in which he regarded a study of (...) logic to be fundamental in philosophy. Part I is largely about the sense in which russell's study of logic is philosophical in character though it differs very considerably, In both style and conception, From wittgenstein's study of it. Part ii is concerned to indicate wittgenstein's dissatisfaction with russell's view that mathematics are indistinguishable from logic and to say something about why he thought that russell's formal proof, Even if valid, Did not establish the philosophical thesis for which he argued. Part iii is concerned to indicate wittgenstein's dissatisfaction with russell's approach to the contradictions in the foundations of mathematics and to say something about his very different treatment of this question. (shrink)

I want to ask: what is knowledge of human beings and can it be acquired by experimental methods? It is a widespread assumption in academic psychology that the methods which have been applied with great success in the physical sciences are applicable to investigations in other areas and hence to psychological investigation. The history of experimental psychology is the history of the adjustments psychologists have made to their subject to be able to apply the experimental method of the sciences to (...) it. In the process of trimming the head to fit the cap on it they have emasculated psychology. (shrink)

There is a difficulty about past emotions, motives, etc., especially if they are in the distant past and I have forgotten what I then felt like, or if I was not aware of my feelings at the time. In the case of physical objects or events in the past I need not be the only witness; but in the case of past mental phenomena the corroboration of the supporting evidence is characteristically different. No doubt, here too we can have the (...) evidence of diaries and of other people's testimony; but the subject's report today plays a peculiar role, this peculiarity varying according to the case in question. E.g., I remember now that I was in love with Mary in my youth. I can see now, for the first time, that as a baby I felt envious of my mother for what she could give. The difficulty in grasping properly the detail that is brought together in talking about other people's past unconscious phantasies, the difficulty in grasping how we distinguish between the case of a person finally assenting to such an interpretation because he has genuinely remembered and that of a person who assents under suggestion, have led some people to say that in these cases we only seem to remember, and what we experience belongs solely to the present. (shrink)

Some people do not find much sense in talk about meaning in life. Some people think that such talk cannot have or express any sense, that those who find sense in it must be under an illusion. Some others think that if one is inclined to think that such talk cannot have any sense that is because one misconstrues its logic. So they set off to show us how it is to be construed if what is said here is to (...) make sense. However, there may not really be anything wrong with what they thus set themselves the task of putting right. Their idea that the logic of discourse on meaning in life has been misconstrued may itself come from limitations in their view of logic and its relation to language, from ‘misunderstandings about the logic of our language’. Therefore, as Professor Hepburn rightly points out, such philosophers, in their attempt to ‘prune and rationalise and redefine the vocabulary’ in question, will merely succeed in misleading themselves in their appreciation of its logic and, worse still, in their understanding of life. In his article Hepburn opposes such simplifications and distortions of logic which may confine our understanding of life. I am in sympathy with his programme, with his desire to fight superficiality, his caution in rejecting brashness. What I want to do is to remark on some of its limitations and to open up some new questions—though it is not my intention here to pursue any of them. (shrink)

Professor Phillips′s short paper ‘Ten Questions for Psycho-Analysis’ goes back a long time to 1964 or 65. The questions were originally directed to me after a paper I read to the Philosophical Society in Swansea. I have answered some of these questions in my books on Freud, though perhaps not to Phillips′s satisfaction. Here I shall try to do so again, however briefly.

Wittgenstein said that what he does in philosophy is ‘to show the fly out of the fly bottle’ (Philosophical Investigations¶309). He is, himself, both the fly, his alter‐ego, and the philosopher who turns the fly around. This is a transformation in his vision of and perspective on those matters which tempted him, through the questions it posed for him, into the bottle, there to be trapped – trapped into a form of scepticism, realism, or one of its many reductionist satellites, (...) for instance. The transformation which releases him into the open takes philosophical work which unearths unspoken assumptions and subjects them to criticism. As for the movement into and out of the bottle, this is the philosophical journey in the course of which the philosopher comes to a new understanding of the matters he questioned in a way that led him into the bottle. To come to such a better understanding, therefore, the philosopher has to have the courage of his temptations and not be afraid to give up what he holds on to. What he learns in coming out of the bottle belongs to the work that frees him from the compelling pictures that held him captive within the space of opposed theories held together by common assumptions. It cannot be acquired or conveyed independently of such work. It is in this sense that philosophy is a struggle with difficulties which each philosopher has to face and work through himself. The difficulties are not in him, but they are his– they are difficulties for him. He has to work on them. That is why, while he can learn from others, he cannot borrow from them, build on or go on from what they have established. In the first section of the paper I put on some flesh on this. But what I provide is still a thumb‐nail sketch. The question ‘what is philosophy?’ is itself a philosophical question, like any other, and can only be ‘answered’ like them. It is only that with which we are familiar – in our mastery of the language we speak or in our experience of life –that can raise philosophical questions for us. Thus contrast ‘what is knowledge?’, ‘what is thinking?’ with ‘what is cancer?’, ‘what is osmosis?’. The question ‘what is philosophy?’ similarly can only be asked by a philosopher, someone who has asked and struggled with its questions. Otherwise it is a request for information to which the full answer is: you have to study philosophy if you really want to find out. It follows that what I say about the way philosophical questions are to be answered applies equally to the question about the nature of philosophy. Hence I can do no other than provide a thumb‐nail sketch for those who have themselves struggled with philosophical questions. As for what I provide in the following three sections, they are no more than illustrations of a way of working on those sample questions – questions on which hopefully the reader will have thought himself. I am able to offer such illustrations only because I have myself been caught up by these questions and have worked on them and discussed them more fully elsewhere (see Bibliography). (shrink)

Wisdom holds that the reference in many religious beliefs to what lies beyond the world and "transcends" the senses is misleading. religious beliefs speak and can only speak about the world we know by means of the senses. to embrace much of what christians believe means for a person to change in himself and come into contact with something "within" him. i argue, first, that there is a sense of transcendence which is immune from wisdom's criticism and, secondly, that while (...) wisdom is right in his emphasis on the "inner life" he confuses the spiritual with the psychological. (shrink)

Half of Dilman's book deal with skepticism about the physical world and the other half with skepticism about other minds. His main thesis in each case is that the very general doubts that have traditionally troubled philosophers must not be answered on their own terms but by showing that they are confused. Exposing this confusion helps us to understand better the "logic" of our ordinary talk about things and persons. He draws illuminating parallels between problems about knowledge of the external (...) world and about knowledge of other minds. His principal contribution lies in organizing arguments urged by Wittgenstein, Wisdom, and Malcolm. (shrink)

The philosophical image of a “universe of discourse” can be misleading in the suggestions it carries about how to read Wittgenstein and how to approach the topic of the relation between language and reality. That is what I try to show by examining Ilham Dilman's discussion of medieval cosmology. I sketch an alternative account of the relation between medieval beliefs about the heavens and our astronomical beliefs, and I consider in detail the disagreement between the two accounts.

Fulke Greville speaks of the will as inevitably divided between reason and passion. Shakespeare takes such a division seriously but, through Hamlet, he recognizes the possibility of reason and passion being united in a man's will and purpose.

People sometimes ask whether their lives are meaningful or not, whether or not their lives add up to anything. Sometimes they also ask whether life as such is meaningful or not. These are not unconnected questions. Still they are not questions which everyone asks himself. Nor do we always readily recognise what one who asks these questions wants to know. There are some people who will not even find such questions sensible. Some will regard them not as questions but simply (...) as symptoms of something having gone wrong somewhere. Thus in the Diary of the Student Kostya Ryabtsev we find the following words. (shrink)

This book is a discussion of Heidegger's, Sartre's and Marcel's rejection of Cartesian epistemology, the scepticism to which it leads and its objectivist conception of human existence. It compares this rejection with Wittgenstein's rejection of these conceptions of man, his relation to the knowledge of what belongs to the world in which he lives. It concentrates on the existentialist critiques of consciousness as a substance and of the self as such a substance, of each person's body as something external to (...) which he is causally related, and of others as at best indirectly accessible to us. It discusses Sartre's positive views on these questions and the way he falls into a form of solipsism himself. It then considers Sartre's rejection of determinism and his conception of freedom as our capacity for choice. In a concluding chapter the book sketches a non-objectivist account of the self, its development, its 'bad faith', its capacity to emerge from it, and its knowledge of itself, free from the objections considered earlier. It then considers some new objections directed at its own account. Contents: Man in the World; Man's Way of Being: Existential Dualism; The Personal Dimension: Emotions and Value Judgements; Sartre and our Identity as Individuals; Mind and Body: Rejection of Cartesian Dualism; Sartre on the Self and the Other: Rejection of Cartesian Solipsism; Human Separateness and the Possibility of Communion: Marcel's Rejection of Sartrean Solipsism; Sartre: Freedom as Something to which Man is Condemned; Self, Self-Knowledge and Self-Change: A Non-Objectivist View and its Defense. (shrink)