Wittgenstein
Module Code: PI4043
Module Name: Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy
- ECTS Weighting: 5
- Semester/Term Taught: Michaelmas Term
- Contact Hours: 22 hours of lecture
- Module Personnel: Lecturer – Dr. Thomas McNally
Module Content
The course will address the central themes in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, with particular emphasis on his Philosophical Investigations. The seminars will begin with an analysis of Wittgenstein's philosophical development from 1929 to the writing of the Investigations, including the steps he took in rejecting the philosophical framework of his early work, the Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus. The bulk of the course will be devoted to the following issues that are treated at length in the Investigations: naming and ostensive definition (§§1 – 136); meaning and rule following (§§137 – 242); and the so–called private language argument (§§243 – 315). In the final seminars, Wittgenstein's later reflections on necessity and the nature of mathematical truth (in his posthumously published Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics) will be considered in light of these issues. Throughout the course, there will be consideration of many of the most significant interpretations of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, which have been very influential in shaping contemporary debates in analytic philosophy concerning such issues as the nature of language, realism and anti–realism, and the relation between the mind and the body. Of these interpretations, the focus will be on Saul Kripe's sceptical reading of Wittgenstein on meaning and rule–following, and Michael Dummett's conventionalist reading of Wittgenstein on necessity.
Learning Outcomes
Having successfully completed this module, students will be able to:
- describe and critically assess Wittgenstein's later conception of language, and how it shapes his philosophy of mathematics;
- discuss the main changes in his philosophical outlook leading up to the philosophical investigations;
- engage with the question of Wittgenstein's importance for contemporary analytic philosophy.