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© Dale Jacquette

WITTGENSTEIN

Wittgenstein's philosophy has been highly influential in shaping my philosophical outlook. Although I do not consider myself a Wittgensteinian, I am actively engaged in historical and philosophical projects that are directly related to Wittgenstein's work. My recent book, Wittgenstein's Thought in Transition, explains Wittgenstein's early and later work and offers an historical-philosophical explanation of how Wittgenstein came to abandon the early philosophy in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus for the radically different approach to the same set of philosophical problems in the Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Investigations, and numerous posthumous and unpublished manuscripts of his later period.

My interpretation is that Wittgenstein rejects his early theory of logical atomism, the picture theory of meaning, and general form of proposition because of the color incompatibility problem, which the Tractatus had inadequately tried to explain as a matter of syntactical contradiction. I am especially interested in Wittgenstein's distinctive approach to logic in the early philosophy, and in his private language argument in the later period. I have recently completed articles on 'Quantum Indeterminacy and Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument', 'Analysis of Quantifiers in Wittgenstein's Tractatus', and 'Wittgenstein's Anthropologism in Logic, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences'. I am currently at work on a short monograph, Early Wittgenstein on Identity.

Wittgenstein's Thought in Transition (Purdue University Press, 1998) (xix + 356 pp.).

"Indeterminarea Cuanticai Argumentul Wittgensteinian al Limbajului Privat", (Romanian translation of "Quantum Indeterminacy and Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument", 1999, below) Analysis and Metaphysics, 4, 2005, 125-147.

"Idealism and Williams's Semantic Paradox", Philosophical Investigations, 27, 2004, 117-128.

"Analysis of Quantifiers in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Critical Survey", Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy, 4, 2001, 191-202.

"Quantum Indeterminacy and Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument", Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, 2, 1999, 79-95.

"Wittgenstein's Anthropologism in Logic, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences", Social Epistemology, 13, 1999, 303-322.

"L'Antropologismo Wittgensteiniano nella Logica, nella Filosofia e nelle Scienze Sociali", (Italian translation of "Wittgenstein's Anthropologism in Logic, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences", 1999 above), Studi Perugini, 7, 1999, 159-189.

"Wittgenstein's Manometer and the Private Language Argument", History of Philosophy Quarterly, 15, 1998, 99-126.

"Wittgenstein on the Transcendence of Ethics", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75, 1997, 304-324.

"Wittgenstein on Private Language and Private Mental Objects", Wittgenstein Studien, 1, 1994, Article 12 (computer disk format textname: 12-1-94.TXT) (89K) (c. 29 pp.).

"Metaphilosophy in Wittgenstein's City", International Studies in Philosophy, 25, 1993, 27-35.

"Wittgenstein's Critique of Propositional Attitude and Russell's Theory of Judgment", Brentano Studien, 4, 1992-1993, 193-220.

"Wittgenstein and the Color Incompatibility Problem", History of Philosophy Quarterly, 7, 1990, 353-365.

"Wittgenstein on Frege's Urteilstrich", <EM>International LogicReview, 32, 1985, 79-82.

"Wittgensteins 'Tractatus' und die Logik der Fiktion", Wittgenstein und die Literatur, edited by John Gibson and Wolfgang Huemer, translated by Martin Suhr (Frankfurt am Main: Surkamp Verlag, 2006), 448-467 (original English version published by Routledge, 2004 below).

"Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the Logic of Fiction", Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Literature, edited by John Gibson and Wolfgang Huemer (London: Routledge, 2004), 305-317.

"Wittgenstein on Lying as a Language Game", The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, edited by Daniél Moyal-Sharrock (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 159-176.

"Wittgenstein on Thoughts as Pictures of Facts and the Transcendence of the Metaphysical Subject", Wittgenstein and the Future of Philosophy: A Reassessment After 50 Years / Wittgenstein und die Zukunft der Philosophie, Eine Newbewetung nach 50 Jahren, edited by Rudolf Haller and Klaus Puhl (Vienna: Öbv&Hpt, 2002), 160-170.

"Wittgenstein, Ludwig", Encyclopedia of Commnication and Information, edited by Jorge Reina Schement (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2002), 1090-1092.

"On Certainty (Wittgenstein, Ludwig)", World Philosophers and Their Works, revised edition, 3 vols., edited by John K. Roth (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2000), vol. 3, 2002-2005.

"Haller on Wittgenstein and Kant", Austrian Philosophy Past and Present: Essays in Honor of Rudolf Haller, edited by Keith Lehrer and Johannes Christian Marek, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 29-44.

"Constructibility and the Analysis of Quantifiers in Wittgenstein's Tractatus", The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy: Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 20th International Wittgenstein Symposium, edited by Paul Weingartner, Gerhard Schurz and Georg Dorn (Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 1997), 5, Vol. I, 419-426.

"Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument and Reductivism in the Cognitive Sciences", Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, edited by Roberto Casati, Barry Smith, and Graham White (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1994), 89-99.

"Metaphilosophy in Wittgenstein's City", Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Symposium on the Centennial of his Birth, edited by Souren Tegharian, Anthony Serafini and Edward M. Cook (Wakefield: Longwood Academics, 1990), 31-42; reprinted in International Studies in Philosophy 1993 (above).

forthcoming

"Wittgenstein on Language Game Criteria and the Paris Standard Metric Bar", Critical Guide to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, edited by A.M. Ahmed, (Cambridge University Press).

Review of Rom Harré and Michael Tissaw, Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 45, 2007, 169-170.

Review of Gordon Baker, Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects, International Philosophical Quarterly, 45, 2005, 264-266.

Review of Oswald Hanfling, Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life, International Philosophical Quarterly, 43, 2003, 384-387.

Essay Review of P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic, 18, 1997, 109-114.

Review of Andres Rivadulla, "Wahrscheinlichkeitsaussagen, statistische Inferenz und Hypothesenwahrscheinlichkeit in L. Wittgensteins Schriften der Übergangsperiode", Mathematical Reviews, 95i, 1995, 5080.