Bruce Brower

According to "the General Interpretation" of Wittgenstein's private language argument, he argues that because correct and incorrect usage must be spelled out in terms of agreement or lack of agreement with communal practice, an isolated individual could not speak a private language. I argue that the General Interpretation is a bad account of Wittgenstein's actual argument and that any argument against the possibility of a private language which is based on the General Interpretation is unsound. ;The General Interpretation fails to make sense of the central argument in Philosophical Investigations, sections 243-289. In these passages Wittgenstein argues only against the possibility of languages in which terms for mental states are introduced by inner ostensive definition. The passages on rule following are shown to contain no argument against other types of private language. ;Several popular versions of the private language argument are evaluated on their own merits. In each case, it is argued that correct and incorrect usage can be spelled out in terms of coherence with individual, rather than communal, practice. It is argued that we can imagine fairly complex private languages in which the individual can make assertions that play roles analogous to the roles which assertions play in public language. ;Finally, it is argued that a Wittgensteinian account of rule following is consistent with the views presented in earlier parts of the thesis. Let a speaker's representational set be the speaker's total set of mental phenomena with a representational component. Two speakers may have the same representational sets, be in the same situation, take themselves to act on the basis of their representational sets, and yet act differently. The difference between the two is a difference in skill, not representation. Such skills are in most cases normatively assessed by the speaker's linguistic community. Consequences for functionalist philosophy of mind are suggested

Despite being co-opted by economists and politicians for their own purposes, ‘welfare’ traditionally refers to well-being, and it is in this sense that L. W. Sumner understands the term. His book is a clear, careful, and well-crafted investigation into major theories of welfare, accompanied by a one-chapter defense of “welfarism,” the view that welfare is the only foundational value necessary for ethics. Sumner himself is attracted to utilitarianism, but he makes no commitment to it in this work, which will be of interest to many moral philosophers.

The notion that some things have intrinsic value, independently of whether they are valued or would be valued under certain conditions, is puzzling not only to noncognitivists and skeptics, but to theorists who understand value in terms of what would be accepted by rational preference, in a social contract, or under conditions of vivid imagination. Written in the tradition of Roderick Chisholm’s Brentano and Intrinsic Value, Noah Lemos’s Intrinsic Value: Concept and Warrant is unlikely to diminish the puzzlement, though it will be beneficial to those who accept intrinsic value and our knowledge of it.

The notion that some things have intrinsic value, independently of whether they are valued or would be valued under certain conditions, is puzzling not only to noncognitivists and skeptics, but to theorists who understand value in terms of what would be accepted by rational preference, in a social contract, or under conditions of vivid imagination. Written in the tradition of Roderick Chisholm’s Brentano and Intrinsic Value, Noah Lemos’s Intrinsic Value: Concept and Warrant is unlikely to diminish the puzzlement, though it will be beneficial to those who accept intrinsic value and our knowledge of it.