This bilingual volume—English and German on facing pages—brings together the writings Wittgenstein composed during his stay in Dublin between October 1948 and March 1949, one of his most fruitful periods. He later drew more than half of his remarks for Part II of Philosophical Investigations from this Dublin manuscript. A direct continuation of the writing that makes up the two volumes of Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, this collection offers scholars a glimpse of Wittgenstein's preliminary thinking on one of (...) his most important works. G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman both teach at the University of Helsinki. (shrink)

Descartes made a sharp distinction between matter and mind. But he also thought that the two interact with one another. Is such interaction possible, however, without either a materialist reduction of mind to matter or an idealist (phenomenalist) reduction of matter to mind? These questions overshadow the Western tradition in metaphysics from the time of Descartes to present times. The book makes an effort to stay clear of reductivist views of the two Cartesian substances. It defends a dualistic psycho-physical parallel (...) theory which reconciles freedom of action with determinism in nature. Basic problems in perception theory are also discussed, with special emphasis on hearing and sound. Because of the intrinsic interest of the subject and the author's non-technical presentation of it, the book should appeal to all readers with a serious interest in philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

Lichtenbergs Schriften können wir uns als der wunderbarsten Wünschelrute be‐dienen; wo er einen Spass macht, liegt ein Problem verborgen.

_Zettel, _ an en face bilingual edition, collects fragments from Wittgenstein's work between 1929 and 1948 on issues of the mind, mathematics, and language.

The paper is based upon a conception of norms as prescriptions which are neither true nor false. Two norms may be said to contradict one another when the conjunction of (the descriptions of) their contents is a logical contradiction. A norm is said to entail another norm when the first norm and the negation-norm of the second contradict one another. By the negation-norm of an obligation is understood a permission "to the contrary", and by the negation-norm of a permission an (...) obligation "to the contrary". On the basis of these definitions it can be shown that the axioms and theorems of first order standard deontic logic are "normative tautologies". Norms of higher order may be viewed as prescriptions "transmitting the will" of a higher or sovereign authority through a lower or sub-ordinate authority to the norm-subjects. Under this conception of the orders, it is provable that a "complete" system of deontic logic is S4-like. (shrink)

For the last 25 years, since publication of his Logical Studies, Professor Von Wright has steadily explored the field of philosophical logic. The concept of negation, logical paradoxes, the puzzles connected with evidence and probability in confirmation theory, the interrelatedness of the ideas of time and change, and the clarification of the structure of temporal and spatial orderings are among the many areas he has profitably investigated.

Symposium in Helsinki, 24-27 August 1970 / Entretiens de Helsinki, 24-27 août 1970.

Throughout his active philosophical life, Nikolai Berdiaev was preoccupied with the philosophical and sociological questions stemming from the impact of technology on the life of modern man. He gave to his thoughts a condensed expression in a longish essay in the journal Put' for 1933 with the title "Man and Machine" [Chelovek i mashina]. But he had touched on the subject penetratingly already in his early work The Meaning of History [Smysl istorii], which was first published in Russian in 1923 (...) and in English translation in 1936, and he devoted a chapter to it in his last major work, the posthumously published The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar [Tsarstvo dukha i tsarstvo Kesaria], which came out in Russian in 1949 and in English translation in 1952. In the last year of his life, Berdiaev read a paper titled "L'homme dans la civilization technique" at a conference in Neuchâtel. The Russian original of the paper apparently has not been published. (shrink)