Much ink has been spilt in consideration of the once pervasive reliance on military metaphors to depict the relationships between science and religion in the nineteenth century. This has resulted in historically sensitive treatments of secularization; and the realization that the relationship between science and religion was not a bloody war between intellectual nation states, but a protracted divorce of former partners. Moreover, historians of science have been encouraged to throw off the yoke of the internalism–externalism debate, and to explore (...) the cultural boundaries that impinged upon practitioners of a natural knowledge of the world. Within the historiography of nineteenth-century science, this has resulted in many new perspectives on science and natural knowledge in relation to cultural control and authority. (shrink)

In reading Wittgenstein one can, and for the most part perhaps should, treat the expression ‘language-game’ as a term of art, a more or less arbitrarily chosen item of terminology meaning something like ‘an actual or possible way of using words’. It would then be a fairly routine task to work out answers to such questions as what features of the ways a word is used are emphasized by this term of art, what philosophical purposes are served by the description (...) of primitive language-games or of variations on actual language-games, or in exactly what way those purposes are supposed to be served. (shrink)

Parti INTRODUCTION Wittgenstein sometimes suggested looking on words as instruments, for example in the following passages from ...

Gallop's criticisms are so extensive and so vigorous that one may wonder how he could mean it when he praises my book in the ways he does at the beginning and end of his notice. In the hope of making it believable that some at least of the praise is deserved, I will try to show that much of the criticism is not as damaging as it may at first appear. Most of what I say will be of a rather (...) general nature, and that is perhaps unfortunate when Gallop has gone into so many interesting questions of detail; but one of my general defences will be that this discussion of particular questions not only does not, but could not, support the objection that the decision procedure that is illustrated in the book is incapable of dealing with all too many of the moral dilemmas an average person is likely to have to face. (shrink)

It is quite difficult to respond briefly and effectively to such a devastating charge as that the only merit your book has is that it is honest. My strategy will be, by showing that a few of Resnick's criticisms are ill-taken, to generate the presumption that the same could be said of a lot more of them. I will first discuss some minor points, and then two larger issues.

John Locke:When we set before our eyes a round globe of uniform colour, v.g. gold, alabaster or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having, by use, been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of (...) the sensible figures of bodies: the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes.H.H. Price:…. a distant hillside which is full of protuberances, and slopes upwards at quite a gentle angle, will appear flat and vertical….. This means that the sense-datum, the colour expanse which we sense, actually is flat and vertical. (shrink)

The following are not among the least puzzling remarks in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations:572. Expectation is, grammatically, a state; like: being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something. But in order to understand the grammar of these states it is necessary to ask: ‘What counts as a criterion for anyone's being in such a state?’ 573.… What, in particular cases, do we regard as criteria for someone's being of such and such an opinion? When do (...) we say: he reached this opinion at that time? When he has altered his opinion? And so on. The picture which the answers to these questions give us shews what gets treated grammatically as a state here. (shrink)

It is a curious thing about the philosophy of mind, that it includes surprisingly little about minds. In an average anthology on the subject, or a book like Ryle's, one finds discussions of thinking, imagining, believing, willing, remembering, and so on, but not of minds. It seems to be assumed that investigating these topics is investigating minds; but whether that is true is not itself made a topic for investigation.

The article is an interpretation of about the first half of chapter xi of part ii of "philosophical investigations". Wittgenstein is treated as having the single aim of arguing down the massive temptation to suppose that the expression 'to see...As...', And such similar expressions as 'to recognize', Record the occurrence of an experience distinct from the experience of simply seeing the object seen as or recognized. Ways are suggested of making a kind of sense of most of the very perplexing (...) remarks in this stretch of the "investigations". (shrink)

Many people seem to find it quite impossible to doubt that if a person did not do something freely, then he can be neither praised nor blamed for doing it. This assumption is shared by people with very different views about freedom, determinism and moral responsibility. It is held by most ‘libertarians’, who, to preserve moral responsibility, reject determinism. It is held by ‘hard determinists’, who accept determinism and therefore reject moral responsibility; and it is held by ‘soft determinists’, who (...) accept determinism, but argue that determinism does not exclude any kind of freedom that is relevant to whether a person may be held responsible. (shrink)