The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein (NP 101 or 102 or 108)

The purpose of this subject is to enable you to study some of the most influential ideas of the 20th century. The main texts are Wittgenstein’s posthumously-published Philosophical Investigations and The Blue and Brown Books. These writings are famous not just for their content but also for their distinctive style and conception of philosophy. There is much critical discussion about the relation between those aspects of Wittgenstein’s work.

Wittgenstein covers a great range of issues, principally in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. In philosophy of language, one key topic is the nature of rules and rule-following. What is involved in grasping a rule; and how can I tell, in a new case, what I have to do to apply the rule correctly? Indeed, what makes it the case that a particular move at this stage is the correct way of applying the rule; is there any standard of correctness other than the agreement of our fellows? Other topics include: whether language is systematic; the relation between linguistic meaning and non-linguistic activities; whether concepts can be illuminatingly analysed. In the philosophy of mind, Wittgenstein is especially famous for the so-called “private language argument”, which tries to show that words for sensations cannot get their meanings by being attached to purely internal, introspective, “private objects”. Other, equally important, topics include the nature of the self, of introspection and of visual experience, and the intentionality (the representative quality) of mental states. Most generally, can we (as Wittgenstein thought) avoid Cartesianism without lapsing into behaviourism?

The texts: try Philosophical Investigations paras 1-80; Blue Book pp. 1-17; Marie McGinn: Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (Routledge); Saul Kripke: Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Blackwell).