Originally published in 1952. This book is a critical survey of the views of scientific inference that have been developed since the end of World War I. It contains some detailed exposition of ideas – notably of Keynes – that were cryptically put forward, often quoted, but nowhere explained. Part I discusses and illustrates the method of hypothesis. Part II concerns induction. Part III considers aspects of the theory of probability that seem to bear on the problem of induction and (...) Part IV outlines the shape of this problem and its solution take if transformed by the present approach. (shrink)

First Published in 1975. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume considers the problem of social pathology in modern society, in terms of a breakdown of social structure. The author gives a careful explanation of the notion of social structure. Examples are drawn from Marx, Lorenz, and post-war Great Britain, and Professor Wisdom develops the idea that a common underlying factor where social structures go badly wrong lies in the breakdown of caste.

Professor Wisdom gives an elementary introduction to the applications in philosophy of the analytical method. He believes that the aim of analysis is clarity, whereas the aim of speculative philosophy is truth. After a brief introduction on what analysis is, he discusses the relation of body and mind and seeks for causal relations between mental and material events. He concludes this section with a chapter on Free will, before turning to perception and the external world.

This book is based on previously unpublished lectures that Wisdom delivered at the University of Virginia. Its content goes significantly beyond that of his other books. Here he is concerned with how misunderstandings about what it is to prove something or what it is to explain something can infect our thinking in many different fields.

Gasking, D. A. T. The philosophy of John Wisdom.--Thomson, J. J. Moore's technique revisited.--Yalden-Thomson, D. C. The Virginia lectures.--Dilman, I. Paradoxes and discoveries.--Ayers, M. R. Reason and psycholinguistics.--Roberts, G. W. Incorrigibility, behaviourism and predictionism.--Hinton, J. M. "This is visual sensation."--Gunderson, K. The texture of mentality.--Newell, R. W. John Wisdom and the problem of other minds.--Lyon, A. The relevance of Wisdom's work for the philosophy of science.--Morris, H. Shared guilt.--Bambrough, R. Literature and philosophy.--Chronological list of published (...) writings of John Wisdom, 1928-1972 (p. [293]-300). (shrink)

1. ‘How do we know the material world?’, ‘What is it to know the material world?’, ‘In what ways is knowledge of the material world like and in what ways is it unlike other sorts of knowledge?’ We know how we know the material world and what it is to know the material world and in what ways such knowledge is like and unlike other sorts of knowledge. But a man who knows what poetry is like and how it is (...) like and unlike prose may ask ‘What is poetry?’, and a mathematician who knows what it is like to do mathematics may ask ‘What is mathematics?’ It is in a rather like way that we ask ‘What is knowledge of the material world?’ The ways in which knowledge of the material world is like and unlike other sorts of knowledge are familiar to us but we wish for a still better grasp of these likenesses and unlikenesses. (shrink)