1st Edition

Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning Towards a Social Conception of Mind

By Meredith Williams Copyright 1999
    334 Pages
    by Routledge

    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning offers a provocative re-reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind, and explores the tensions between Wittgenstein's ideas and contemporary cognitivist conceptions of the mental. This book addresses both Wittgenstein's later works as well as contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. It provides fresh insight into the later Wittgenstein and raises vital questions about the foundations of cognitivism and its wider implications for psychology and cognitive science.

    Introduction. Part 1. Against the philosophic tradition 1. Wittgenstein on representations, privileged objects, and private languages 2. Private states and public practices: Wittgenstein and Schutz on intentionalty 3. Wittgenstein, Kant, and the "metaphysics of experience" 4. Language learning and the representational theory of mind Postscript to Chapter 4 5.Social norms and narrow content Part 2. A new direction 6. Rules, community, and the individual 7. The philosophical significance of learning in the later Wittgenstein 8. The etiology of the obvious:Wittgenstein and the elimination of indeterminacy 9.Wittgenstein's rejection of scientific psychology 10. Vygotsky's social theory of mind notes bibliography index of quotations index

    Biography

    Meredith Williams is Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.

    'Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning represents one of the most subtle and sustained developments available of the communitarian or social reading of Wittgenstein's later work.'
    - Mind

    'A remarkably clear and immensely rewarding book.'
    - Philosophical Investigations