Description:
The essays in Wittgenstein, Scepticism and Naturalism cover the later Wittgenstein's thought on scepticism about the external world; scepticism about other minds; knowledge and belief; meaning and rule-following; and the nature of psychological concepts. Focusing on topics in the later philosophy, the essays provide a distinctive understanding of the nature of philosophical development of Wittgenstein's thought from the early to the later work.
Review Quotes:
This book brings together 11 papers by Marie McGinn--written between 1998 and 2014--all of which concern Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Engaging in fruitful and original ways with many central topics in Wittgenstein's scholarship, they cannot but stimulate any reader to pause and think about the issues concerned. On the whole, the essays may be seen as articulating an overarching view, revolving around McGinn's ascription to Wittgenstein of a 'highly distinctive form of naturalism' (vii),1 which she ties to Wittgenstein's remark that 'what we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings' (PI, §415). This naturalism does not concern nature as it appears 'in the controlled and artificial conditions of the laboratory experiment' (128), but nature is the environment in which our daily lives are embedded - Philosophical Investigations 2022; Scepticism and Naturalism: Essays on the Later Philosophy Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein; Wim Vanrie Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium