Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning Volume 1 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Part I: Essays

by Baker, Gordon P.; Hacker, P. M. S.

• ISBN13: 9781405101769
• ISBN10: 1405101768
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-02-04
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This is a new edition of the first volume of G.P.Baker and P.M.S. Hacker's definitive reference work on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. New edition of the first volume of the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations. Takes into account much material that was unavailable when the first edition was written. Following Baker's death in 2002, P.M.S. Hacker has thoroughly revised the first volume, rewriting many essays and sections of exegesis completely. Part One - the Essays - now includes two completely new essays: 'Meaning and Use' and 'The Recantation of a Metaphysician'. Part Two - Exegesis §§1-184 - has been thoroughly revised in the light of the electronic publication of Wittgenstein's Nachlass, and includes many new interpretations of the remarks, a history of the composition of the book, and an overview of its structure. The revisions will ensure that this remains the definitive reference work on Wittgenstein's masterpiece for the foreseeable future.

Author Biography

G.P. Baker was a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford from 1967 until his death in 2002. He is the co-author with P.M.S. Hacker of the first two volumes of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1980-96), and with Katherine Morris of Descartes' Dualism (1996). He also wrote numerous articles on Wittgenstein, Frege, Russell, Waismann and Descartes.

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, the first two volumes co-authored with G.P. Baker, (Blackwell, 1980-96) and of Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). He has also written extensively on philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, most recently The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003), co-authored with M.R. Bennett.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction to Part I: Essays	xiii
Abbreviations	xix
I The Augustinian conception of language (§1)	1	(28)
1. Augustine's picture	1	(3)
2. The Augustinian family	4	(10)
(a) word-meaning	4	(2)
(b) correlating words with meanings	6	(1)
(c) ostensive explanation	7	(2)
(d) metapsychological corollaries	9	(2)
(e) sentence-meaning	11	(3)
3. Moving off in new directions	14	(5)
4. Frege	19	(4)
5. Russell	23	(3)
6. The Tractatus	26	(3)
II Explanation (§6)	29	(16)
1. Training, teaching and explaining	29	(4)
2. Explanation and meaning	33	(2)
3. Explanation and grammar	35	(4)
4. Explanation and understanding	39	(6)
III The language-game method (§7)	45	(20)
1. The emergence of the game analogy	45	(9)
2. An intermediate phase: comparisons with invented calculi	54	(3)
3. The emergence of the language-game method	57	(4)
4. Invented language-games	61	(2)
5. Natural language-games	63	(2)
IV Descriptions and the uses of sentences (§18)	65	(16)
1. Flying in the face of the facts	65	(2)
2. Sentences as descriptions of facts: surface-grammatical paraphrase	67	(3)
3. Sentences as descriptions: depth-grammatical analysis and descriptive contents	70	(3)
4. Sentences as instruments	73	(3)
5. Assertions, questions, commands make contact in language	76	(5)
V Ostensive definition and its ramifications (§28)	81	(26)
1. Connecting language and reality	81	(2)
2. The range and limits of ostensive explanations	83	(5)
3. The normativity of ostensive definition	88	(4)
4. Samples	92	(5)
5. Misunderstandings resolved	97	(6)
6. Samples and simples	103	(4)
VI Indexicals (§39)	107	(6)
VII Logically proper names (§39)	113	(16)
1. Russell	113	(4)
2. The Tractatus	117	(3)
3. The criticisms of the Investigations: assailing the motivation	120	(4)
4. The criticisms of the Investigations: real proper names and simple names	124	(5)
VIII Meaning and use (§43)	129	(30)
1. The concept of meaning	129	(7)
2. Setting the stage	136	(8)
3. Wittgenstein: meaning and its internal relations	144	(8)
4. Qualifications	152	(7)
IX Contextual dicta and contextual principles (§50)	159	(30)
1. The problems of a principle	159	(5)
2. Frege	164	(6)
3. The Tractatus	170	(1)
4. After the Tractatus	171	(2)
5. Compositional theories of meaning	173	(8)
6. Computational theories of understanding	181	(8)
X The standard metre (§50)	189	(12)
1. The rudiments of measurement	189	(3)
2. The standard metre and canonical samples	192	(1)
3. Fixing the reference or explaining the meaning?	193	(4)
4. Defusing paradoxes	197	(4)
XI Family resemblance (§65)	201	(26)
1. Background: definition, logical constituents and analysis	201	(7)
2. Family resemblance: precursors and anticipations	208	(4)
3. Family resemblance: a minimalist interpretation	212	(4)
4. Sapping the defences of orthodoxy	216	(3)
5. Problems about family-resemblance concepts	219	(3)
6. Psychological concepts	222	(2)
7. Formal concepts	224	(3)
XII Proper names (§79)	227	(24)
1. Stage-setting	227	(3)
2. Frege and Russell: simple abbreviation theories	230	(3)
3. Cluster theories of proper names	233	(2)
4. Some general principles	235	(3)
5. Some critical consequences	238	(1)
6. The significance of proper names	239	(5)
7. Proper names and meaning	244	(7)
XIII Turning the examination around: the recantation of a metaphysician (§89)	251	(20)
1. Reorienting the investigation	251	(2)
2. The sublime vision	253	(3)
3. Diagnosis: projecting the mode of representation on to what is represented	256	(3)
4. Idealizing the prototype	259	(4)
5. Misunderstanding the role of the Ideal	263	(3)
6. Turning the examination around	266	(5)
XIV Philosophy (§109)	271	(36)
1. A revolution in philosophy	271	(6)
2. The sources of philosophical problems	277	(7)
3. The goals of philosophy: conceptual geography and intellectual therapy	284	(3)
4. The difficulty of philosophy	287	(3)
5. The methods of philosophy	290	(4)
6. Negative corollaries	294	(5)
7. Misunderstandings	299	(4)
8. Retrospect: the Tractatus and the Investigations	303	(4)
XV Surveyability and surveyable representations (§ 122)	307	(28)
1. Surveyability	307	(4)
2. Precursors: Hertz, Boltzmann, Ernst, Goethe, Spengler	311	(9)
3. The morphological method and the difficulty of surveying grammar	320	(6)
4. Surveyable representations	326	(9)
XVI Truth and the general propositional form (§134)	335	(22)
1. The demands of the picture theory	335	(5)
2. 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'	340	(4)
3. '..do we have a single concept of proposition?' (PG 112)	344	(2)
4. '..the use of the words "true" and "false"...belongs to our concept "proposition" but does not fit it...' (PI §136)	346	(3)
5. Truth, correspondence and multi-valued logic	349	(8)
XVII Understanding and ability (§143)	357	(30)
1. The place of the elucidation of understanding in the Investigations	357	(2)
2. Meaning and understanding as the soul of signs	359	(3)
3. Categorial misconceptions of understanding	362	(5)
4. Categorial clarification	367	(8)
(a) Understanding is not an experience	368	(1)
(b) Understanding is not a process	369	(2)
(c) Understanding is not a mental state	371	(2)
(d) Understanding is neither a dispositional state of the brain nor a disposition	373	(2)
5. Powers and abilities	375	(5)
6. Understanding and ability	380	(7)
Index	387