"One of the most impressive pieces of scholarship I have ever encountered."-W. E. Kennick, Amherst College There is nothing in the literature on the Philosophical Investigations comparable to this learned and exhaustive commentary. Offering both information and interpretation, it is a remarkable book that fills a recognized need for a close study of one of the world's major works of philosophy. After a general introduction, Father Hallett divides the text of the Investigations into forty-one units, and then provides an introduction (...) to each section, along with detailed comments on individual paragraphs, statements, and expressions. His use of paragraph numbers in the general introduction and in the sectional introductions permits ready reference downward, for detailed development or illustration of a general observation, or upward, from a particular passage to its wider context. To clarify the philosophical point of Wittgenstein's remarks, Father Hallett makes frequent references to other parts of the Investigations; to Wittgenstein's other writings, both published and unpublished; and to the works which Wittgenstein knew and often had in mind, such as those of Frege, Russell, Moore, James, Augustine, Plato, Schlick, and Kohler. Father Hallett also cites and quotes secondary sources, and he includes an appendix relating Wittgenstein to more than 150 authors, particularly those of his own generation or earlier whom he read, or knew personally, and who are mentioned in this commentary. Written in straightforward and lucid prose, this outstanding book reveals continuities in Wittgenstein's thought over long periods of time. It is an indispensable guide for those preparing courses on the Investigations and a useful tool for students taking those courses. (shrink)

From Descartes to Popper, philosophers have criticized and tried to improve the strategies of reasoning invoked in science and in everyday life. In recent years leading cognitive psychologists have painted a detailed, controversial, and highly critical portrait of common sense reasoning. Stephen Stich begins with a spirited defense of this work and a critique of those writers who argue that widespread irrationality is a biological or conceptual impossibility.Stich then explores the nature of rationality and irrationality: What is it that distinguishes (...) good reasoning from bad? He rejects the most widely accepted approaches to this question approaches which unpack rationality by appeal to truth, to reflective equilibrium or conceptual analysis. The alternative he defends grows out of the pragmatic tradition in which reasoning is viewed as a cognitive tool. Stich's version of pragmatism leads to a radical epistemic relativism and he argues that the widespread abhorrence of relativism is ill founded. (shrink)

The fame of Ludwig Wittgenstein as one the most important and original philosophers of the century-and also as an intense, magnetic personality-has grown steadily since his death in 1951.