Michael Hymers

Philosophers have often thought that concepts such as ”knowledge” and ”truth” are appropriate objects for theoretical investigation. In a discussion which ranges widely over recent analytical philosophy and radical theory, Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses takes issue with this assumption, arguing that such theoreticism is not the solution but the source of traditional problems in epistemology (How can we have knowledge of the world around us? How can we have knowledge of other minds and cultures? How can we have knowledge of ourselves?) and in the philosophy of language (How can we know what our words refer to?).The author draws on Wittgenstein and recent neo-pragmatists (Putnam, Rorty, Davidson, Williams) to argue that analytical philosophy and radical theory alike stand in an ambivalent relationship with skepticism, which issues forth in varieties of ”epistemic neuroses” - manifested most clearly in the cases of metaphysical realism, relativism and causal theories of reference. Each of these projects is defined in terms possibilities that conflict with its own chances of cognitive success. Hymers explains not only the mainstream analytical philosophy of such figures as Devitt, Quine and Burge, but also structuralism (Althusser, Lacan), feminist theory (Seller, MacKinnon, Lugones) and critical theory (Marcuse), in an attempt to outline a therapeutic alternative to philosophical theoreticism.

Some philosophers influenced by Quine's meaning-holism agree that metaphor matters for science and for language in general, but they part ways over whether metaphors are cognitive. Hesse holds that metaphors have special cognitive content, apart from the literal content of the expressions used metaphorically. Davidson and Rorty deny this. I offer a partial reconciliation, allowing that metaphor has a noncognitive dimension, but holding that there is no sharp boundary between the literal and the metaphorical, between meaning and use, or between the cognitive and noncognitive. This also answers the question: Where do dead metaphors gets their second literal meanings?

I argue that Wittgenstein’s short-lived verificationism (c.1929-30) differed from that of his contacts in the Vienna Circle in not being a reductionist view. It lay the groundwork for his later views that the meaning of a word is determined by its use and that certain "propositions of the form of empirical propositions" (On Certainty, §§96, 401, 402) act as "norm[s] of description" (On Certainty,§§167, 321). He gave it up once he realized that it contradicted his rejection of logical atomism, and that he ever held such a view at all says something about his respect for the leader of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick.