Mar 28, 2024  
2016-2017 Academic Catalog 
    
2016-2017 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

PHI 392-01 - Advanced Studies in Anglo-American Philosophy: Wittgenstein

4 credits (Fall)
In this seminar we will engage in a careful study of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s thought is typically divided into three periods–the early (Tractatus), middle (The Blue and Brown Books) and late (Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty)–and we will examine his views in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology in each of them.  Particular attention will be paid to the continuities and discontinuities in his views across these periods as well as the broader philosophical motivations for and consequences of them.  Majors themes and topics that will be focused on include: From the early period: The notion of logical form and the picture theory of meaning, the nature of the proposition and the analysis of generality, the limits of sense and the saying/showing distinction; From the middle period: The color-exclusion problem and the idea of language as a calculus of rules or conventions; From the late period: the notion of language games and the use ‘theory’ of meaning, the rule-following considerations, the argument against the possibility of a private language, philosophy-as-therapy and the dissolution of skepticism.

Prerequisite: PHI 253 PHI 254 PHI 256 PHI 257 , or PHI 258 .
Instructor: Fennell