The task of understanding Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations is more like that of understanding a difficult person than of grasping difficult ideas. It makes heavy demands upon the reader. He must first of all have the patience to stare at slight variations in language-uses until they look as marked as Wittgenstein wants them to look. Then he must be prepared for what looks like impassable break-offs in line of thought. Next, if he is a philosopher, he must listen to a great (...) many hard sayings about philosophy—some of them prepared for, others thrown in as crotchety asides. Through all this, he must also come to see that here is suggested a radically new way of looking at language. Without some grasp of this new way, he cannot hope to feel the main force of the work. Instead of trying to summarize the Investigations, therefore, I will try to draw together some of the principal ideas which seem to me to give sense and unity to its details. This will not amount to seeing the book as a whole. Also, I expect that the result will misrepresent some of those ideas, I hope not grievously. (shrink)

In Principles of Human Knowledge Berkeley speaks of the sensible qualities of an apple as being its parts. The paper argues that our words for sense-qualities play a role so unlike that of part-words that verbal atrocities would result from treating qualities as parts. Berkeley lends a surface plausibility to this move by focusing on a narrow selection of the normal linguistic accompaniment of the noun 'apple'. He puts out of mind the language of 'doing things with apples'— peeling, dicing, (...) and so on— which when recalled shows how strikingly far apart are the two categories he tries to mingle. (shrink)

The ordinary justification for my not doubting that the next bread I eat will nourish me as in the past is that we humans do not bother ourselves with doubts except where life actually prompts a doubt. Hume, however, represents this not-doubting as an inference we repeatedly draw, and not a very strong one since it concludes to a future-tense judgement from past-tense premisses. Thus Hume creates the impression that the commonest ways of leaning on past experience as a guide (...) involve a woefully weak type of inference, and this paper challenges that impression. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the question “Is a human essentially distinct from every possible machine?” proceeds on the assumption that we know what a man essentially is, namely a living body with such attributes as consciousness, freedom, feeling and linguistic competence. Is a man essentially that? The paper contrasts that picture of man with Kierkegaard’s account of man as essentially self. Hard limits of machine subjectivity begin to appear in the failure of certain everyday concepts involving ‘self’ to engage (...) at all with the concept ‘machine’. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the question “Is a human essentially distinct from every possible machine?” proceeds on the assumption that we know what a man essentially is, namely a living body with such attributes as consciousness, freedom, feeling and linguistic competence. Is a man essentially that? The paper contrasts that picture of man with Kierkegaard’s account of man as essentially self. Hard limits of machine subjectivity begin to appear in the failure of certain everyday concepts involving ‘self’ to engage (...) at all with the concept ‘machine’. (shrink)

Mr. Barker examines the efforts of Keynes, Reichenbach, Carnap, Williams, Popper, Kemeny and others in their search for the rationale of experimental inference. On what paradigm of reasoning does empirical knowledge depend? Some philosophers suppose it to be induction by enumeration, others induction by elimination, but Mr. Barker sees hope in a modified version of the hypothetico-deductive method. Our knowledge, he explains, forms a’ system ‘in which the fates of various bits are bound together. Philosophers are misled when they speak (...) as if we could confirm a hypothesis that stands alone. Instead, we ought to count one hypothesis better confirmed than its rival ‘if and only if there is some system including the former and the evidence which is somehow than any system including the latter and the evidence’. Here he brings in Kemeny’s ‘logical measure’ of simplicity, read in terms of the number of ways in which two systems of hypotheses can be true in an membered universe. Mr. Barker does not go into the application of this enormous Apparat, nor does he explain the sense of ‘system’ which is supposed to go with his examples of hypotheses, e.g., ‘There’s a cat behind the sofa’. (shrink)

Mr. Barker examines the efforts of Keynes, Reichenbach, Carnap, Williams, Popper, Kemeny and others in their search for the rationale of experimental inference. On what paradigm of reasoning does empirical knowledge depend? Some philosophers suppose it to be induction by enumeration, others induction by elimination, but Mr. Barker sees hope in a modified version of the hypothetico-deductive method. Our knowledge, he explains, forms a’ system ‘in which the fates of various bits are bound together. Philosophers are misled when they speak (...) as if we could confirm a hypothesis that stands alone. Instead, we ought to count one hypothesis better confirmed than its rival ‘if and only if there is some system including the former and the evidence which is somehow than any system including the latter and the evidence’. Here he brings in Kemeny’s ‘logical measure’ of simplicity, read in terms of the number of ways in which two systems of hypotheses can be true in an membered universe. Mr. Barker does not go into the application of this enormous Apparat, nor does he explain the sense of ‘system’ which is supposed to go with his examples of hypotheses, e.g., ‘There’s a cat behind the sofa’. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1922, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has changed the face of modern logic and, whether rightly or wrongly interpreted, lent its ideas to such typically 20th Century movements as Logical Atomism and Vienna Circle Positivism. Mr. Stenius turns back to the Tractatus with a deep though critical commitment to the view of language which it upholds. Its ‘picture’ theory of sentence-meaning, he feels, offers a key to many problems about how language functions. To get a notion of what (...) Mr. Stenius does in this book, it is helpful to keep in mind the problems Wittgenstein tried to meet. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1922, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has changed the face of modern logic and, whether rightly or wrongly interpreted, lent its ideas to such typically 20th Century movements as Logical Atomism and Vienna Circle Positivism. Mr. Stenius turns back to the Tractatus with a deep though critical commitment to the view of language which it upholds. Its ‘picture’ theory of sentence-meaning, he feels, offers a key to many problems about how language functions. To get a notion of what (...) Mr. Stenius does in this book, it is helpful to keep in mind the problems Wittgenstein tried to meet. (shrink)