This text provides a unique and compelling account of Wittgenstein's impact upon twentieth century analytic philosophy, from its inception at the turn of the ...

This essential introduction to the philosopher and his thought, combines passages from Wittgenstein with detailed interpretation. Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which "to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it". Wittgenstein defined humans as language-using creatures. The role of philosophy is to ask questions which reveal the limits and nature of language. Taking the expression, description and observation of pain as examples, Hacker explores the ingenuity with which Wittgenstein (...) identified the rules and set the limits of language. (shrink)

The classificatory concept of analytic philosophy cannot fruitfully be given an analytic definition, nor is it a family-resemblance concept. Dummett's contention that it is 'the philosophy of thought' whose main tenet is that an account of thought is to be attained through an account of language is rejected for historical and analytic reasons. Analytic philosophy is most helpfully understood as a historical category earmarking a leading trend in twentieth-century philosophy originating in Cambridge. Its first three phases, viz. Cambridge Platonist pluralism, (...) logical atomism, and logical positivism are adumbrated and their interrelations explained. Wittgenstein is argued to have originated the 'linguistic turn' that characterizes the latter two. (shrink)

Since the first publication of Insight and Illusion in l972, a wealth of Wittgenstein's writings have become accessible. Accordingly, in this edition Professor Hacker has rewritten six of his eleven original chapters and revised the others to incorporate the new abundant material. Insight and Illusion now fully clarifies the historical backgrounds of Wittgenstein's highly different masterpieces, the Tractatus and the Investigations, and traces the evolution of Wittgenstein's thought. Hacker explains all of Wittgenstein's writings in detail, focusing on his (...) critique of metaphysics, his famous "private language argument," and his account of self-consciousness. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Focusing on diverse aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy, this volume not only provides a valuable introduction, but also investigates connections between the philosophy of Wittgenstein, other philosophers--in particular, Frege, Frazer, Carnap, and Strawson--and philosophical trends. It also illuminates very different aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, probing into the controversies it stimulates, as well as into its influence.

Since the first publication of Insight and Illusion in l972, a wealth of Wittgenstein's writings has become accessible. Accordingly, in this edition Professor Hacker has rewritten six of his eleven original chapters and revised the others to incorporate the new abundant material.Insight and Illusion now fully clarifies the historical backgrounds of Wittgenstein's highly differing masterpices, the Tractatus and the Investigations, and traces the evolution of Wittgenstein's thought. Hacker explains all of Wittgenstein's writings in detail, focusing on his critique (...) of metaphysics, his famous "private language argument," and his account of self consciousness. (shrink)

Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies consists of thirteen thematically linked essays on different aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, by one of the leading commentators on his work. After an opening overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy the following essays fall into two classes: those that investigate connections between the philosophy of Wittgenstein and other philosophers and philosophical trends, and those which enter into some of the controversies that, over the last two decades, have raged over the interpretation of one aspect or another (...) of Wittgenstein's writings. The connections that are explored include the relationship between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the humanistic and hermeneutic traditions in European philosophy, Wittgenstein's response to Frazer's Golden Bough and the interpretation of ritual actions, his attitude towards and criticisms of Frege, the relationship between his ideas and those of members of the Vienna Circle on the matter of ostensive definition, and a comparison of Carnap's conception of the elimination of metaphysics and of Strawson's rehabilitation of metaphysics with Wittgenstein's later criticisms of metaphysics. The controversies into which Hacker enters include the Diamond-Conant interpretation of the Tractatus, Winch's interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule, and Malcolm's defence of the idea that Wittgenstein claimed that mastery of a language logically requires that the language be shared with other speakers. These far-ranging essays, several of them previously unpublished or difficult to find, shed much light upon different aspects of Wittgenstein's thought, and upon the controversies which it has stimulated. (shrink)

El libro que reseñamos estudia la naturaleza humana desde una perspectiva muy amplia al abordar el “potencial moral”. Efectivamente, la expresión inglesa “moral powers” es compleja de trasladar al castellano ya que hace referencia a la fuerza moral, aludiendo pues al rendimiento o la potestad moral; así como, la potencia humana y su capacidad moral. Nos encontramos ante un hito que estudia el valor en la vida y el pensamiento humano, escrito por uno de los pensadores contemporáneos más activos e (...) importantes del momento. Estamos pues ante una investigación filosófica sobre las potencialidades y sensibilidades morales de los seres humanos, del significado de la vida humana y el lugar que ocupa la muerte en la vida. Se nos presentan unas reflexiones sobre antropología filosófica, es decir el estudio del marco conceptual mediante el cual pensamos, hablamos e investigamos acerca del ser humano, entendido en su horizonte social y cultural. El volumen examina la diversidad de valores en la vida humana y el lugar del valor moral dentro de las variedades de estos valores. El asunto crucial gira alrededor de la naturaleza del bien y el mal y la propensión humana a la virtud y al vicio. Examina las concepciones tradicionales sobre el valor ético y repasa críticamente los conceptos erróneos que se han ido introduciendo en la filosofía, la psicología o la neurociencia cognitiva. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Regular musical activity as a complex multimodal lifestyle activity is proposed to be protective against age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This cross-sectional study investigated the association and interplay between musical instrument playing during life, multi-domain cognitive abilities and brain morphology in older adults from the DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study study. Participants reporting having played a musical instrument across three life periods were compared to controls without a history of musical instrument playing, well-matched for reserve proxies of education, (...) intelligence, socioeconomic status and physical activity. Participants with musical activity outperformed controls in global cognition, working memory, executive functions, language, and visuospatial abilities, with no effects seen for learning and memory. The musically active group had greater gray matter volume in the somatosensory area, but did not differ from controls in higher-order frontal, temporal, or hippocampal volumes. However, the association between gray matter volume in distributed frontal-to-temporal regions and cognitive abilities was enhanced in participants with musical activity compared to controls. We show that playing a musical instrument during life relates to better late-life cognitive abilities and greater brain capacities in OA. Musical activity may serve as a multimodal enrichment strategy that could help preserve cognitive and brain health in late life. Longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to support this notion. (shrink)

This entry sketches the theory of personal identity that has come to be known as animalism. Animalism’s hallmark claim is that each of us is identical with a human animal. Moreover, animalists typically claim that we could not exist except as animals, and that the (biological) conditions of our persistence derive from our status as animals. Prominent advocates of this view include Michael Ayers, Eric Olson, Paul Snowdon, Peter van Inwagen, and David Wiggins.

This collection of essays provides an introduction to Nietzsche's thought and educational writings, and examines questions concerning the centrality of values for education in postmodernity.

Wittgensteinian Thomism (WT) proposes a post-Wittgensteinian reading of Aquinas based on the presence of genuine affinities between them in philosophical anthropology, epistemology, philosophy of mind, action theory, and ethics. While this proposal has been historically fruitful in the works of Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny, and Herbert McCabe, there is a significant difficulty in the prima facie incompatibility in the respective attitudes towards metaphysics between Wittgenstein and Aquinas. This calls into question the very coherence of the WT proposal. (...) Against this objection, I will argue that WT is a coherent proposal which can harmonize these seemingly incompatible attitudes towards metaphysics by showing that Wittgenstein’s conception of grammatical observations do not necessarily exclude metaphysics but provides a guide towards it. I will argue that rather than being opposed, grammar and metaphysics are concomitantly joined in Wittgenstein’s later remarks. If this reading of Wittgenstein surmounts that proposed by Hacker, then the incoherence objection to WT simply fails. (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)

Michael A. Petersa and Fazal Rizvib aBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘no...

This paper focusses on our concerns about revelations about sexual harassment in universities and the inadequate responses whereby some universities seem more concerned about their own reputations than the care and protection of their students. Seldom do cases go to criminal court, instead they mostly fall within employment relations policies where the use of non-disclosure agreements are double edged, such that some perpetrators remain nameless even if the person offended against wants details made public. Of course if the staff member (...) does not resign or take retirement prior to potential dismissal, but remains in the institution, the grapevine still works. Universities too often become complicit in cover-ups at the expense of further potential victims of sexual misconduct. It has been with much dismay that we found that despite extensive training and writing about ethics some senior professors in philosophy fields have been accused and found wanting, disabusing us of the virtue assumption. Despite these recent instances where perpetrators have been named and been publicised in the media, we found that this is not in fact new, so not only does the paper look to the past, but also extensively it uses contemporary accounts, reports and documents from USA, UK, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. These seem to be the tip of the iceberg, so our hope is that all students and staff in universities (and in fact all institutions where there are inherent power imbalances) will not only feel safe, but that they will be safe as universities become genuinely ethical institutions. (shrink)

Michael A PetersBeijing Normal UniversityChatGPT is an AI chatbot released by OpenAI on November 30, 2022 and a ‘stable release’ on February 13, 2023. It belongs to OpenAI’s GPT-3 family (generativ...

Western Marxism, since its Western deviation and theoretical development in the 1920s, developed in diverse ways that has reflected the broader philosophical environment. First, a theory of conscio...

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive (...) cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist’ response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. (shrink)

This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students readi...

Martin Heidegger is, perhaps, the most controversial philosopher of the twentieth-century. Little has been written on him or about his work and its significance for educational thought. This unique collection by a group of international scholars reexamines Heidegger's work and its legacy for educational thought.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself.–Gregory Bateson, Steps Towards an Ecology of Mind...

Open Peer Review: Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT)Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University, PR ChinaIn 2016 EPAT started experimenting with open peer review for articles that were part...

[This editorial is part of the 50th celebration issue that explored ‘what comes after postmodernism in educational theory. The special issue is being published as a monograph and this is our group...

With an up-to-date synopsis, review, and critique of his writings, this book demonstrates Derrida's almost singular power to reconceptualize and reimagine the ...

This book takes up, and takes seriously, the institutional sites and pedagogical investments of professional identity for college English teachers and examines how these site and investments both constitute and complicate the space of our politics.

This paper re-examines Lyotard's notion of the postmodern condition in terms of its relevance and significance for education. The first section of the paper examines the Wittgensteinian role that Lyotard ascribes to philosophy in the postmodern condition. The second section, following Lyotard's discursive turn, locates the problem of the legitimation of education and knowledge in relation to capitalism. The final section provides a review of both Lyotard's responses to his critics and his reappraisal of his own work.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China;There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds– Gregory Bateson (1972, p. 492)While there are classical anteced...

The terms ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge capitalism’ have been used with increasing frequency since the 1990s as a way of describing the latest phase of capitalism in in the process of global r...