Quotations

As you may have guessed, I am a Peter Hacker fan. I'm rereading his and Baker's Frege: Logical Excavations in which they basically argue that the established interpretation of Frege (Dummett's, for the most part) is all wrong. Here are two interesting quotes from the introduction.

Some form of reductionism in philosophy of mind meshes, to mutual advantage, with the currently popular computer analogy for understanding the operations of the brain. Where our ancestors pictured themselves in the image of God, we picture ourselves in the image of our machines. The Gods were conceived as creating us in their image, whereas we created them in ours. We now invent machines to do automatically what we do thoughtfully, and conceive of ourselves on the model of our automata. (26)

The scientific conception of philosophy is, of course, no novelty. It was vigorously propounded by Russell in the first quarter of the century, but was in eclipse in the 1950s and 1960s, so much so that Ryle casually observed in 1957, 'It comes naturally to us now–as it did not 30 years ago–to differentiate logic from science ...; it comes natural to us not to class philosophers as scientists or a fortiori as super-scientists'. Now, unhappily, it is once more in ascendancy. (27)

Unhappily, indeed!

Wittgenstein's Market Value

In 2005 David Stern published an article titled "How Many Wittgensteins?" In it he discusses the state of Wittgenstein scholarship:

Wittgenstein is far enough away from the present to be of little interest to most of those doing contemporary philosophy, and not yet distant enough to be part of the history of philosophy. Most professional philosophers in the US, and many philosophy departments, are not interested in Wittgenstein at all. … Two institutional yardsticks will have to do duty for a more detailed discussion of the rather low status of Wittgenstein studies in many parts of the philosophical profession….

First, undergraduates with an interest in Wittgenstein who are applying for graduate programs, and graduate students thinking of writing a dissertation on Wittgenstein are routinely advised to highlight a complementary area of specialization, and to underplay or even conceal their work on Wittgenstein. Those who do go on to write dissertations on Wittgenstein will look in vain at the American Philosophical Association's "Jobs For Philosophers" for advertisements that ask for expertise on Wittgenstein.

These are depressing words. I'm in the middle of writing a dissertation on Wittgenstein, and had my first go at the market earlier this year (I applied for several of the 1-year, terminating appointments that show up in the online JFP ads). I didn't expect any interviews (I will not have defended by the beginning of the Fall semester, and I don't yet have any publications), and sure enough, I didn't receive any invitations.

I decided to find out if Stern was right, and searched the issues of JFP dating back to 2000 to see if anyone was advertising for a Wittgensteinian. It's not quite as bad as Stern says (i.e., I didn't look "in vain"), but it wasn't that encouraging either.

2006

Stonehill College (MA), AOC: Wittgenstein.

University of Illinois at Chicago, AOS: philosophy of language "(Wittgenstein, perhaps)."

2005

University of East Anglia, AOS: "philosophy in the tradition of Wittgenstein."

2004

Loyola University New Orleans, AOS: "history of analytic philosophy [Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, etc.]."

Northern Arizona University, AOS: "philosophical commitments formed and nurtured by reflection on the writings of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard."

2003

University of East Anglia, AOS: Wittgenstein.

2001

Kenyon College (OH), AOS: Wittgenstein.

2000

Kenyon College (OH), AOC: Wittgenstein.

Eight advertisements in seven years. This doesn't include advertisements for 'philosophy of language' or 'history of analytic philosophy' to which a Wittgensteinian can apply (along with the throngs of other 'analytic' job-seekers). All I can say is: hopefully, there aren't that many Wittgensteinians out there.

Slate Article on Wittgenstein

An article on Wittgenstein (by Clive James) has been posted at Slate.com: http://www.slate.com/id/2164046?nav=tap3

It isn't very good, but I suppose I shouldn't complain. At least Wittgenstein is being discussed.

There are a few factual errors, the worst being this: "Apart from the Tractatus, all his books, collected from notes made from his lectures, were published posthumously." Even as an account of the Blue Book this is incorrect (Wittgenstein dictated the Blue Book to his students; it was not "made from" notes of his lectures).

There's also this: "David Pears—whose short book Wittgenstein (1971) remains valuable even in the flood of light cast by Ray Monk's magnificent biography of 1990...."

I'm a big fan of Monk's biography, and Pears's Wittgenstein is only a beginner's introduction (say, as opposed to Anscombe's, or Pears's False Prison), but this is silly. One gets the impression that these are the only works on Wittgenstein that Clive has read. Don't get me wrong, that's an admirable accomplishment for a layman, but Duty of Genius is not a work of philosophical exegesis. As rudimentary as Pears's Wittgenstein is, it is a better commentary on Wittgenstein's philosophy than Monk's intellectual biography.