Rails to Infinity: Essays on Themes from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations by Crispin Wright (PDF)

Description

This volume, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death, brings together thirteen of Crispin Wright’s most influential essays on Wittgenstein’s later philosophies of language and mind, many hard to obtain, including the first publication of his Whitehead Lectures given at Harvard in 1996. Organized into four groups, the essays focus on issues about following a rule and the objectivity of meaning; on Saul Kripke’s contribution to the interpretation of Wittgenstein; on privacy and self-knowledge; and on aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics. Wright uses the cutting edge of Wittgenstein’s thought to expose and undermine the common assumptions in platonistic views of mathematical and logical objectivity and Cartesian ideas about self-knowledge. The great question remains: How to react to the demise of these assumptions? In response, the essays develop a concerted, evolving approach to the possibilities–and limitations–of constructive philosophies of mathematics and mind. Their collection constitutes a major statement by one of Britain’s most important philosophers–and will provide an indispensable tool both for students of Wittgenstein and for scholars working more generally in the metaphysics of mind and language.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Crispin Wright is Global Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Professor of Philosophical Research at the University of Stirling, and Regius Professor of Logic Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Perhaps wait for the paperback edition. Most of the articles here have been previously published. The Wittgensteinian dialogue with McDowell is here. Some unpublished work on self-knowledge. Overall, this is not the first book I’d recommend for someone wanting to learn Wittgenstein or how to write clear philosophical prose. His prose is about one rung up from Peacocke. Not even as clear as the occasional obscurities of McDowell. I’d only recommend this text for Wittgenstein die-hards.

⭐Crispin Wright has contributed as much, if not more than anyone else to Wittgenstein’s legacy in mathematics, and deserves the praise that he has garnered in that regard.This particular collection of essays is broad and more ambitious in scope than any one topic, but the linkages to the foundations of mathematics are never very far away. It is commonly known that over half of all of Wittgenstein’s work from 1929 onwards was connected to mathematics, yet Philosophical Investigations, published after his death, contains relatively little on the subject. This dichotomy, along with the general reservation of most philosophers to avoid heavy duty mathematical theorems, has led to a hugely disproportionate amount of work being done on non-mathematical aspects of Wittgenstein, and Crispin Wright is one of the few to take up the challenge of adding much needed balance. In doing so he has become a clearly distinguishable voice in the post 1960’s world of Wittgenstein analysts.The essay on self knowledge is just about as good as anything ever written on the subject that analyses Wittgenstein, and the Essay on Mathematical Proof (chapter 13) is written with rare acuity on a subject that is at the core of all that Wittgenstein ever stood for from the very start of his work. One has only to review his early encounters with Russell and Whitehead prior to the First World War to realise that mathematics was his life long pre-occupation.

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