Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning

This is a new edition of the first volume of G.P.Baker and P.M.S. Hacker's definitive reference work on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. New edition of the first volume of the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations. Takes into account much material that was unavailable when the first edition was written. Following Baker's death in 2002, P.M.S. Hacker has thoroughly revised the first volume, rewriting many essays and sections of exegesis completely. Part One - the Essays - now includes two completely new essays: 'Meaning and Use' and 'The Recantation of a Metaphysician'. Part Two - Exegesis §§1-184 - has been thoroughly revised in the light of the electronic publication of Wittgenstein's Nachlass, and includes many new interpretations of the remarks, a history of the composition of the book, and an overview of its structure. The revisions will ensure that this remains the definitive reference work on Wittgenstein's masterpiece for the foreseeable future.

G.P. Baker was a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford from 1967 until his death in 2002. He is the co-author with P.M.S. Hacker of the first two volumes of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1980-96), and with Katherine Morris of Descartes' Dualism (1996). He also wrote numerous articles on Wittgenstein, Frege, Russell, Waismann and Descartes.

P.M.S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is author of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, the first two volumes co-authored with G.P. Baker, (Blackwell, 1980-96) and of Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). He has also written extensively on philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, most recently The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003), co-authored with M.R. Bennett.

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction to Part I: Essays

xiii

Abbreviations

xix

I The Augustinian conception of language (§1)

1

(28)

1. Augustine's picture

1

(3)

2. The Augustinian family

4

(10)

(a) word-meaning

4

(2)

(b) correlating words with meanings

6

(1)

(c) ostensive explanation

7

(2)

(d) metapsychological corollaries

9

(2)

(e) sentence-meaning

11

(3)

3. Moving off in new directions

14

(5)

4. Frege

19

(4)

5. Russell

23

(3)

6. The Tractatus

26

(3)

II Explanation (§6)

29

(16)

1. Training, teaching and explaining

29

(4)

2. Explanation and meaning

33

(2)

3. Explanation and grammar

35

(4)

4. Explanation and understanding

39

(6)

III The language-game method (§7)

45

(20)

1. The emergence of the game analogy

45

(9)

2. An intermediate phase: comparisons with invented calculi

54

(3)

3. The emergence of the language-game method

57

(4)

4. Invented language-games

61

(2)

5. Natural language-games

63

(2)

IV Descriptions and the uses of sentences (§18)

65

(16)

1. Flying in the face of the facts

65

(2)

2. Sentences as descriptions of facts: surface-grammatical paraphrase

67

(3)

3. Sentences as descriptions: depth-grammatical analysis and descriptive contents

70

(3)

4. Sentences as instruments

73

(3)

5. Assertions, questions, commands make contact in language

76

(5)

V Ostensive definition and its ramifications (§28)

81

(26)

1. Connecting language and reality

81

(2)

2. The range and limits of ostensive explanations

83

(5)

3. The normativity of ostensive definition

88

(4)

4. Samples

92

(5)

5. Misunderstandings resolved

97

(6)

6. Samples and simples

103

(4)

VI Indexicals (§39)

107

(6)

VII Logically proper names (§39)

113

(16)

1. Russell

113

(4)

2. The Tractatus

117

(3)

3. The criticisms of the Investigations: assailing the motivation

120

(4)

4. The criticisms of the Investigations: real proper names and simple names

124

(5)

VIII Meaning and use (§43)

129

(30)

1. The concept of meaning

129

(7)

2. Setting the stage

136

(8)

3. Wittgenstein: meaning and its internal relations

144

(8)

4. Qualifications

152

(7)

IX Contextual dicta and contextual principles (§50)

159

(30)

1. The problems of a principle

159

(5)

2. Frege

164

(6)

3. The Tractatus

170

(1)

4. After the Tractatus

171

(2)

5. Compositional theories of meaning

173

(8)

6. Computational theories of understanding

181

(8)

X The standard metre (§50)

189

(12)

1. The rudiments of measurement

189

(3)

2. The standard metre and canonical samples

192

(1)

3. Fixing the reference or explaining the meaning?

193

(4)

4. Defusing paradoxes

197

(4)

XI Family resemblance (§65)

201

(26)

1. Background: definition, logical constituents and analysis

201

(7)

2. Family resemblance: precursors and anticipations

208

(4)

3. Family resemblance: a minimalist interpretation

212

(4)

4. Sapping the defences of orthodoxy

216

(3)

5. Problems about family-resemblance concepts

219

(3)

6. Psychological concepts

222

(2)

7. Formal concepts

224

(3)

XII Proper names (§79)

227

(24)

1. Stage-setting

227

(3)

2. Frege and Russell: simple abbreviation theories

230

(3)

3. Cluster theories of proper names

233

(2)

4. Some general principles

235

(3)

5. Some critical consequences

238

(1)

6. The significance of proper names

239

(5)

7. Proper names and meaning

244

(7)

XIII Turning the examination around: the recantation of a metaphysician (§89)

251

(20)

1. Reorienting the investigation

251

(2)

2. The sublime vision

253

(3)

3. Diagnosis: projecting the mode of representation on to what is represented

256

(3)

4. Idealizing the prototype

259

(4)

5. Misunderstanding the role of the Ideal

263

(3)

6. Turning the examination around

266

(5)

XIV Philosophy (§109)

271

(36)

1. A revolution in philosophy

271

(6)

2. The sources of philosophical problems

277

(7)

3. The goals of philosophy: conceptual geography and intellectual therapy

284

(3)

4. The difficulty of philosophy

287

(3)

5. The methods of philosophy

290

(4)

6. Negative corollaries

294

(5)

7. Misunderstandings

299

(4)

8. Retrospect: the Tractatus and the Investigations

303

(4)

XV Surveyability and surveyable representations (§ 122)

307

(28)

1. Surveyability

307

(4)

2. Precursors: Hertz, Boltzmann, Ernst, Goethe, Spengler

311

(9)

3. The morphological method and the difficulty of surveying grammar

320

(6)

4. Surveyable representations

326

(9)

XVI Truth and the general propositional form (§134)

335

(22)

1. The demands of the picture theory

335

(5)

2. 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'

340

(4)

3. '..do we have a single concept of proposition?' (PG 112)

344

(2)

4. '..the use of the words "true" and "false"...belongs to our concept "proposition" but does not fit it...' (PI §136)

346

(3)

5. Truth, correspondence and multi-valued logic

349

(8)

XVII Understanding and ability (§143)

357

(30)

1. The place of the elucidation of understanding in the Investigations

357

(2)

2. Meaning and understanding as the soul of signs

359

(3)

3. Categorial misconceptions of understanding

362

(5)

4. Categorial clarification

367

(8)

(a) Understanding is not an experience

368

(1)

(b) Understanding is not a process

369

(2)

(c) Understanding is not a mental state

371

(2)

(d) Understanding is neither a dispositional state of the brain nor a disposition

373

(2)

5. Powers and abilities

375

(5)

6. Understanding and ability

380

(7)

Index

387

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Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning Volume 1 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Part I: Essays

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