P. M. S. Hacker

Peter M. S. Hacker addresses the concepts of “Fatalism and Freedom” and performs a thorough analysis of the language in which these concepts are used. An examination of the notion of freedom shows the collocations and phraseology with which it is intertwined and which represent their meaningful forms of expression. By using this analytical method, the author shows how freedom is related to notions of decision, possibility and opportunity and illustrates how language games determine our options for action. Moreover, the chapter contains an analysis of several fallacies and reveals how they emerge if wrong conclusions are drawn from correct premises. Hacker’s explanations are supplemented by numerous examples from different contexts, such as history, religion, mythology and poetry.

Frege’s contribution to philosophical logic has been so overwhelming that little if any attention seems to have been paid to his remarks on epistemology. It is of course true that he never published a work exclusively concerned with epistemological issues. But his paper “The Thought” contains extensive treatment of matters concerning the theory of knowledge. Moreover the importance which he attributed to some of his remarks on specific epistemological problems can be gauged by the frequency with which he repeats them throughout his writings. The introductions to the Foundations of Arithmetic and to the Basic Laws of Arithmetic contain much the same biting sarcastic onslaught upon idealism and psychologism. Similar points are repeated in his review of Husserl’s Philosophie der Arithmetik, in his paper “Negation”, and in other articles. His concern with epistemology is wholly determined by the bearing which it has upon philosophical logic. This is largely negative. Apart from the paper “The Thought” his remarks go only so far as is necessary in order for him to vindicate his doctrine of the purity of logic. Indeed even in that paper his motives are similar, but his treatment of the issues involved is more extensive and his own incompletely developed epistemological position shows through more clearly than elsewhere. An examination of his views is of value from two points of view, firstly it is of some intrinsic interest, secondly his position takes him to the threshold of Wittgenstein’s argument against the possibility of a private language. Moreover, as I shall try to show, the substance of his view is frequently the target of Wittgenstein’s critical discussion.

History of Cognitive Neuroscience documents the major neuroscientific experiments and theories over the last century and a half in the domain of cognitive neuroscience, and evaluates the cogency of the conclusions that have been drawn from them. Provides a companion work to the highly acclaimed Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience – combining scientific detail with philosophical insights Views the evolution of brain science through the lens of its principal figures and experiments Addresses philosophical criticism of Bennett and Hacker's previous book Accompanied by more than 100 illustrations.

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.”

The classificatory concept of analytic philosophy cannot fruitfully be given an analytic definition, nor is it a family-resemblance concept. Dummett's contention that it is 'the philosophy of thought' whose main tenet is that an account of thought is to be attained through an account of language is rejected for historical and analytic reasons. Analytic philosophy is most helpfully understood as a historical category earmarking a leading trend in twentieth-century philosophy originating in Cambridge. Its first three phases, viz. Cambridge Platonist pluralism, logical atomism, and logical positivism are adumbrated and their interrelations explained. Wittgenstein is argued to have originated the 'linguistic turn' that characterizes the latter two

In recent years philosophers have given much attention to the ‘ontological problem’ of events. Donald Davidson puts the matter thus: ‘the assumption, ontological and metaphysical, that there are events is one without which we cannot make sense of much of our common talk; or so, at any rate, I have been arguing. I do not know of any better, or further, way of showing what there is’. It might be thought bizarre to assign to philosophers the task of ‘showing what there is’. They have not distinguished themselves by the discovery of new elements, new species or new continents, nor even of new categories, although there has often been more dreamt of in their philosophies than can be found in heaven or earth. It might appear even stranger to think that one can show what there actually is by arguing that the existence of something needs to be assumed in order for certain sentences to make sense. More than anything, the sober reader will doubtlessly be amazed that we need to assume, after lengthy argument, ‘that there are events’.

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