P. M. S. Hacker

Originally conceived as a forty-page conclusion to Hacker’s twenty years of work on the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, this book “rapidly assumed a life of its own”. A major contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, this substantial volume delivers even more than the title promises. The eight chapters are best approached as a six-chapter book, itself some 220 pages long, on Wittgenstein’s contribution to twentieth-century philosophy, followed by a two-chapter, 120-page epilogue about how and why his influence has waned. The first six chapters provide an encyclopedic summary of the fruits of Hacker’s research on Wittgenstein’s writing, an immensely learned account of British philosophy from the turn of the century to the 1970s, and a detailed account of Wittgenstein’s reception by Oxford, Cambridge, and the Vienna Circle. The book’s closing chapters, “Post-positivism in the United States and Quine’s Apostasy” and “The Decline of Analytic Philosophy,” polemically argue that Quine’s philosophy, and the post-Quinean naturalism prevalent in Anglo-American philosophy today, amount to such a decisive break with the analytic tradition, as Hacker conceives of it, that they should not be counted as “analytic.”

1. The Tractatus doctrine of saying and showing In a letter to Russell dated 19.4.1919, written shortly after he had finished the Tractatus, Wittgenstein told Russell that the main contention of the book, to which all else, including the account of logic, is subsidiary, ‘is the theory of what can be expressed (gesagt) by prop[osition]s -- i.e. by language -- (and, which comes to the same, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by prop[osition]s, but only shown (gezeigt); which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy’ (CL 68). This was emphasized in both preface and conclusion of the book. The preface observes that the whole sense of the book can be summed up in the following words: ‘what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence’ (TLP p.3). The conclusion of the book (TLP 7) simply repeats this. The preceding three remarks, however, are noteworthy. They make three claims. First, ‘There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical’ (TLP 6.522). This reiterates the leitmotif of the book, namely that there are things that cannot, by the very nature of representation, be said. But though they cannot be said, they are shown by features of the relevant system of representation. Secondly, the correct method in philosophy would really be to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. empirical propositions that have nothing to do with philosophy, and then, when someone wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give meaning to certain signs in his propositions (TLP 6.53). This method, of course, is not the method that has been followed throughout the book, which consists almost exclusively of modal assertions concerning what must, can or cannot be thus and so in reality, in language and in the relation between language and reality..

Wittgenstein's critical and constructive analysis of ostensive definition is examined. Nine fundamental logico‐metaphysical errors stemming from misapprehension of ostensive definition are identified, most of which occur in the Tractatus. The Fregean holistic conception of meaning is applied to the special case of ostension. Ostensive definition is one rule among others. It is not unequivocal, it does not link language with reality, nor does it determine its own application. The role of samples in ostensive definition of perceptual properties is analysed, and the affinities between samples and Tractarian simples stressed. Samples belong to the method of representation, and not to the substance of reality. The constructive analysis is brought to bear upon the previously identified errors. Finally, a further range of problems concerning ostensive definition is raised.

This essential introduction to the philosopher and his thought, combines passages from Wittgenstein with detailed interpretation. Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which "to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it". Wittgenstein defined humans as language-using creatures. The role of philosophy is to ask questions which reveal the limits and nature of language. Taking the expression, description and observation of pain as examples, Hacker explores the ingenuity with which Wittgenstein identified the rules and set the limits of language.

This third volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations covers sections 243-427, which constitute the heart of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis. The thirteen essays cover all the major themes of this part of Wittgenstein's masterpiece: the private language arguments, privacy, avowals and descriptions, private ostensive definition, criteria, minds and machines, behavior and behaviorism, the self, the inner and the outer, thinking, consciounesss, and the imagination. The exegesis clarifies and evaluates Wittgenstein's arguments, drawing extensively on all the unpublished papers, examining the evolution of his ideas in manuscript sources and definitively settling many controversies about the interpretation of the published text. This commentary, like its predecessors, is indispensable for the study of Wittgenstein and is essential reading for students of the philosophy of mind. A fourth and final volume, entitled Wittgenstein: Mind and Will will complete the commentary.

Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies consists of thirteen thematically linked essays on different aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, by one of the leading commentators on his work. After an opening overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy the following essays fall into two classes: those that investigate connections between the philosophy of Wittgenstein and other philosophers and philosophical trends, and those which enter into some of the controversies that, over the last two decades, have raged over the interpretation of one aspect or another of Wittgenstein's writings. The connections that are explored include the relationship between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the humanistic and hermeneutic traditions in European philosophy, Wittgenstein's response to Frazer's Golden Bough and the interpretation of ritual actions, his attitude towards and criticisms of Frege (both in the Tractatus and in the later philosophy), the relationship between his ideas and those of members of the Vienna Circle on the matter of ostensive definition, and a comparison of Carnap's conception of the elimination of metaphysics and of Strawson's rehabilitation of metaphysics with Wittgenstein's later criticisms of metaphysics. The controversies into which Hacker enters include the Diamond-Conant interpretation of the Tractatus (which is shown to be inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus and with Wittgenstein's explanations of and comments on his book), Winch's interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule (which is demonstrated to be remote from Wittgenstein's intentions), and Malcolm's defence of the idea that Wittgenstein claimed that mastery of a language logically requires that the language be shared with other speakers. These far-ranging essays, several of them previously unpublished or difficult to find, shed much light upon different aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, and upon the controversies which it has stimulated.

James Conant, a proponent of the ‘New American Wittgenstein’, has argued that the standard inter- pretation of Wittgenstein is wholly mistaken in respect of Wittgenstein’s critique of metaphysics and the attendant conception of nonsense. The standard interpretation, Conant holds, misascribes to Wittgenstein Carnapian views on the illegitimacy of metaphysical utterances, on logical syntax and grammar, and on the nature of nonsense. Against this account, I argue that (i) Carnap is misrepresented; (ii) the so-called standard interpretation (in so far as I have contributed to it) is misrepresented; (iii) Wittgenstein’s views, early and late, are misrepresented. I clarify Wittgen- stein’s conception of logical syntax and of the nonsense that results from transgressing it.

Th e con fusion a nd b arren ness o f psycho logy is no t to be e xplain ed b y calling it a “yo ung science”; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the oth er case, con cep tual co nfusion and m ethod s of pro of.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems that trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by. (PI p. 232).

The experimental study of the emotions as pursued by LeDoux and Damasio is argued to be flawed as a consequence of the inadequate conceptual framework inherited from the work of William James. This paper clarifes the conceptual structures necessary for any discussion of the emotions. Emotions are distinguished from appetites and other non-emotional feelings, as well as from agitations and moods. Emotional perturbations are distinguished from emotional attitudes and motives. The causes of an emotion are differentiated from the objects of an emotion, and the objects of an emotion are distinguished into formal and material ones. The links between emotions and reasons for the emotion, for associated beliefs and for action are explored, as well as the connection between emotion and care or concern, and between emotion and fantasy. The behavioural criteria for the ascription of an emotion are clarified. In the light of this conceptual network, Damasio’s theory of the emotions is subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting

1. Naturalism Naturalism, it has been said, is the distinctive development in philosophy over the last thirty years. There has been a naturalistic turn away from the a priori methods of traditional philosophy to a conception of philosophy as continuous with natural science. The doctrine has been extensively discussed and has won considerable following in the USA. This is, on the whole, not true of Britain and continental Europe, where the pragmatist tradition never took root, and the temptations of scientism in philosophy were less alluring. Contemporary American naturalism originates in the writings of Quine, the metaphysician of twentieth-century science. With extraordinary panache, he painted a largescale picture of human nature, of language and of the web of belief. I believe that in almost every major respect, it is, like the picture painted by Descartes, the great metaphysician of seventeenth-century science, mistaken. But it evidently appeals to the spirit of the times. So it is worthy of critical examination and careful refutation. I shall argue that the naturalistic turn is a cul-de-sac – a turn that is to be passed by if we are to keep to the highroad of good sense. Naturalism, like so many of Quine’s doctrines, was propounded in response to Carnap. As Quine understood matters, Carnap had been persuaded by Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World that it is the task of philosophy to demonstrate that our knowledge of the external world is a logical construction out of, and hence can be reduced to, elementary experiences. Quine rejected the reductionism of Carnap’s Logischer Aufbau, and found the idealist basis uncongenial to his own dogmatic realist behaviourism, inspired by Watson and later reinforced by Skinner. The rejection of reductionism and ‘unregenerate realism’, Quine averred, were the sources of his naturalism (FME 72). What exactly was this? We can distinguish in Quine between three different but inter-related programmes for future philosophy: epistemological, ontological and philosophical naturalism. Naturalized epistemology is to displace traditional epistemology, transforming the investigation into ‘an enterprise within natural science’ (NNK 68) – a psychological enterprise of investigating how the ‘input’ of radiation, etc., impinging on the nerve endings of human beings can ‘ultimately’ result in an ‘output’ of our theoretical descriptions of the external world..