Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (Volume 3 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations), Part 1: Essays

Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind is the third volume of a four-volume analytical commentary on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It consists of two parts. Part 1 is a sequence of fifteen essays that examine in detailall the major topics discussed in PhilosophicalInvestigations§§243-427. These include the private language arguments, privacy, private ostensive definition, the nature of the mind, the inner and the outer, behaviour and behaviourism, thought, imagination, the self, consciousness, and criteria.

The first edition of this volume of essays was published in 1990 to widespread acclaim as a scholarlytour de force, providing a comprehensive survey of these themes, the history of their treatment in early modern and modern philosophy, the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas on these subjects from 1929 onwards, and an elaborate analysis of his definitive arguments in theInvestigations.

The new second edition has been thoroughly revised by the author and features four new essays. These include a survey of the evolution of the private language arguments in Wittgenstein’s oeuvre and their role within the developing argument of theInvestigations, a comprehensive essay on private ownership of experience and its pitfalls, a detailed examination and defense of Wittgenstein’s repudiation of subjective knowledge of one’s experience, and an overview of the achievement and importance of the private language arguments. New objections to Wittgenstein’s arguments are examined—and found wanting—and new materials from theNachlassthat were not known to exist in 1990 have been incorporated into the text of these essays. All references have been adjusted to the revised fourth edition of the Investigations, but previous pagination in the first and second editions has been retained in parentheses.

These revisions bring the book up to the high standard of the extensively revised editions ofWittgenstein:Understanding and Meaning(2005) andWittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity(2009). They ensure that this survey of Wittgenstein's private language arguments and of his accounts of thought, imagination, consciousness, the self, and criteria will remain the essential reference work on theInvestigationsfor the foreseeable future.

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