Wittgenstein scholarship has continued to grow at a pace few could have anticipated - a testament both to the fertility of his thought and to the thriving state of contemporary philosophy. In response to this ever-growing interest in the field, we are delighted to announce the publication of a second series of critical assessments on Wittgenstein, emphasising both the breadth and depth of contemporary Wittgenstein research.As well as papers on the nature and method of Wittgenstein's philosophy, this second collection also relates to a broader range of topics, including psychology, politics, art, music and culture.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is one of the great works of 20th Century philosophy, destined to join the philosophical canon. Like all great works of philosophy, it poses new problems, while creating new forms of argument and persuasion. But unlike most contemporary philosophy texts, it is not structured by chapter and section headings, but rather by numbered passages -- evidence of Wittgenstein's distinctive style and profound originality. This anthology draws together in one volume several recent essays that help to make his problems and arguments more accessible. The essays are grouped into four sections that roughly correspond to the development that one finds in the Investigations. These sections are: reference and meaning; rules and their application; the interiority of mind, and the alleged uses of private languages; and necessity and grammar. Both readers who are new to the Investigations as well as those who are familiar with Wittgenstein's work should find these essays illuminating and engaging.

Taking on a small part of the larger issue waged between dualists and materialists, the author presents an analysis of intelligence that supports Gilbert Ryle's analysis while exposing the limits that exist between the application of the concept of intelligence and other mental conduct concepts. Topics include the criteria of intelligence; Holloway's definition; intelligent success and change success; intelligence, reflexes, and tropisms; intelligence and instincts, learning, habit, and training ; purpose and intelligent action; style setting dispositions, exemplaries, and occasions; the minds of machines; Turing's analysis; the intelligence of computers; differences between machines and man; inductive and deductive reasoning; and the autonomous machine. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In a world of matter, how can we express what matters? When the explanations of the natural sciences become powerfully precise and authoritative, what is the status of our highest words, the languages that articulate our norms and orient our lives? The Matter of High Words examines a constellation of American writers who in the decades since World War II have posed these questions in distinctive ways. Walker Percy, Marilynne Robinson, Ralph Ellison, Stanley Cavell, and David Foster Wallace are all self-consciously post-WWII authors, attuned to the fragmentation and skepticism that have defined so much of the literary and critical culture of the last century and more. Yet they also attempt to reach back to older forms of thought and writing that are often thought to have dried up-the traditions of prophecy, of wisdom literature, of the sage. Working within this dual inheritance, these authors are drawn equally to both art and argument, “showing” and “telling,” shifting continually between narrative and discursive genres. In their essays they act as moralists, promoting the broad, abstract concepts that might inspire action in the face of naturalistic reduction: community, family, courage, fraternity, marriage, friendship, temperance, judgment. In their narratives, they offer particular lives in particular settings, thick descriptions that give flesh to such high words. Rarely do these movements between genres generate a tidy equilibrium; where their essays speak of cooperation and redemption, their narratives display alienation, loss, and failure. But in pursuing such risky, unorthodox strategies, these postwar sages are not only able to challenge some of the dominant naturalistic theories of the last several decades: cognitive science, neo-Darwinian theory, social science, the fact-value divide in analytic philosophy. Through five chapters of detailed analysis and close reading, Chodat explores the question of whether vocabularies of ought and ought-not can still emerge today, and how these concepts might be embodied, and whether such ideas might be found in things.

A comparative critique of ordinary language philosophy, hermeneutics and critical theory.

The Black Book: Wittgenstein and Race attempts to highlight the importance of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work for contemporary African American and Africana philosophy. Richard A. Jones argues that Wittgenstein’s early Tractarian views on logical atomism and his later more holistic views from his work Philosophical Investigations are exceedingly relevant to African American philosophy. The Black Book investigates the epistemic, linguistic, and political grounds from which inspiration might be drawn. Ultimately, as philosophy attempts to redefine itself in a postmodern discourse where it has been deigned “concluded,” it is the “awe for the ordinary” that Wittgenstein inspires and that should re-inspire the creative imaginary in Africana thought. The Black Book is an attempt to show that Wittgenstein’s work continues to be important, not only for African American philosophers, but for all philosophers.

Isolating the conceptual apparatus dominant in the world of the play, this book traces the play's origins, including those pertaining to Christian Humanism and the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis with its assumption of 'the sovereignty of reason'.