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126Why There Cannot be Any Such Thing as “Time Travel”Philosophical Investigations 35 (2): 138-153. 2011.Extending work of Wittgenstein, Lakoff and Johnson I suggest that it is the metaphors we rely on in order to conceptualise time that provide an illusory space for time-travel-talk. For example, in the “Moving Time” spatialisation of time, “objects” move past the agent from the future to the past. The objects all move in the same direction – this is mapped to time always moving in the same direction. But then it is easy to imagine suspending this rule, and asking why the objects should not start …Read more
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518A Wittgensteinian Way with ParadoxesLexington Books. 2012.A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes examines how some of the classic philosophical paradoxes that have so puzzled philosophers over the centuries can be dissolved. Read argues that paradoxes such as the Sorites, Russell’s Paradox and the paradoxes of time travel do not, in fact, need to be solved. Rather, using a resolute Wittgensteinian ‘therapeutic’ method, the book explores how virtually all apparent philosophical paradoxes can be diagnosed and dissolved through examining their conditions of…Read more
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3Patricia H. Werhane, “Skepticism, Rules, and Private Languages” (review)Philosophy in Review 14 (2): 144-147. 1994.
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45Wittgenstein and the Illusion of ‘Progress’: On Real Politics and Real Philosophy in a World of TechnocracyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 78 265-284. 2016.‘You can’t stop progress’, we are endlessly told. But what is meant by “progress”? What is “progress” toward? We are rarely told. Human flourishing? And a culture? That would be a good start – but rarely seems a criterion for ‘progress’. Rather, ‘progress’ is simply a process, that we are not allowed, apparently, to stop. Or rather: it would be futile to seek to stop it. So that we are seemingly-deliberately demoralised into giving up even trying.Questioning the myth of ‘progress’, and seeking t…Read more
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4Acting from rules: “Internal relations” versus “logical existentialism”International Studies in Philosophy 28 (2): 43-62. 1996.
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7The Enchantment of Words (review)Philosophy 82 (4): 657-661. 2007.This book is a piece of philosophical work of extremely high intellectual quality. Its purpose is to defend in detail a ‘resolute’ reading of the Tractatus. It succeeds in this aim. It thus accomplishes something that has not yet been accomplished even by Conant or Diamond. It is therefore a major contribution to ‘Wittgenstein studies’, to contemporary philosophy and to the philosophical history of recent philosophy
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54Does Thomas Kuhn have a 'model of science'?Social Epistemology 17 (2-3): 293-296. 2003.No abstract
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4David G. Stern, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1): 151-152. 1997.
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27Risky businessForum for European Philosophy Blog. 2016.Rupert Read and David Burnham on what philosophy can tell us about dealing with uncertainty, systemic risk, and potential catastrophe.
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44Wittgenstein in Exile by James C. Klagge (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 51 (3): 499-500. 2013.James Klagge aims to shed light on Wittgenstein’s philosophy by situating it in its biographical–cultural context. While Klagge is not alone in pursuing this aim, his claim to originality lies in his thematic focus on Wittgenstein’s relationship to his time and culture as one of “alienation” (3), expressed by the metaphor of being “in exile” (61). A central concern of Klagge’s is how we, as modern readers living in a “civilized” culture not dissimilar to the one from which Wittgenstein felt hims…Read more
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65On future peopleThink 10 (29): 43-47. 2011.It is no longer socially-acceptable to exhibit prejudice against ethnic minority people on grounds of their ethnicity, women on grounds of their gender, or working-class people on grounds of their class. The last bastions of discrimination are being overcome: such as prejudice against gay and lesbian people, and against disabled people. …Or, is there one more, crucial bastion of discrimination still strongly in place?
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1Wittgenstein and Faulkner's Benjy: Reflections on and of derangementIn John Gibson Wolfgang Huemer (ed.), The Literary Wittgenstein, Routledge. pp. 267--288. 2004.
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Ludwig WittgensteinIn Leemon McHenry, P. Dematteis & P. Fosl (eds.), British Philosophers, 1800-2000, Bruccoli Clark Layman. pp. 262--320. 2002.
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80The road since ‘structure’ (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1): 175-178. 2004.
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80Iv *-throwing away 'the bedrock'Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (1): 81-98. 2005.If one is impressed with Wittgenstein's philosophizing, then it is a deep mistake to think that the terms that he made famous-philosophical terms like 'form of life', 'language-game', 'everyday', 'bedrock'-are the key to his philosophy. On the contrary, they are in the end an obstacle to be overcome. The last temptation of the Wittgensteinian philosopher is to treat these terms as providing a kind of ersatz foundation. They are rather a ladder that takes one... to where one already is, only now …Read more
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Goodman's HumeDiálogos. Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 31 (67): 95-122. 1996.
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47Literature as Philosophy of Psychopathology: William Faulkner as WittgensteinPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 10 (2): 115-124. 2003.I argue that the language of some schizophrenic persons is akin to the language of Benjy in Williams Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, in one crucial respect: Faulkner displays to us language that, ironically, cannot be translated or interpreted into sense... without irreducible 'loss' or 'garbling.' The same is true of famous schizophrenic writers, such as Renee and Schreber. Such 'garbling' is of an odd kind, admittedly: it is a garbling that inadvisably turns nonsense into sense.... Fa…Read more
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23Wittgenstein and the Grammar of Literary Experience by James Guetti (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 35 (4): 412-413. 1995.
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1Patricia H. Werhane, Skepticism, Rules, and Private Languages (review)Philosophy in Review 14 144-147. 1994.
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63Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism: one practice, no dogmaIn Mario D'Amato, Jay L. Garfield & Tom J. F. Tillemans (eds.), Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 13--23. 2009.
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5No Title available: ReviewsPhilosophy 82 (4): 657-661. 2007.This book is a piece of philosophical work of extremely high intellectual quality. Its purpose is to defend in detail a ‘resolute’ reading of the Tractatus. It succeeds in this aim. It thus accomplishes something that has not yet been accomplished even by Conant or Diamond. It is therefore a major contribution to ‘Wittgenstein studies’, to contemporary philosophy and to the philosophical history of recent philosophy.
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |