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J.F.M. Hunter, “Essays After Wittgenstein*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1975

Steven Burns
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University

Extract

Already known for his penetrating, and sometimes idiosyncratic, interpretations of the later Wittgenstein, John Hunter, of University College, Toronto, now offers eight essays on independent topics. Each of the essays stands on its own, but they are clearly the work of a single mind and together constitute a sustained contribution to current discussion of that area of metaphysics sometimes called philosophy of mind. Although the debts to, and the insight into, Wittgenstein are substantial, I do not wish to document them.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1975

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References

1 Dialogue, XIII: 3, (1974), p. 630.

2 Kai Neilsen, in an enthusiastic commentary (‘Remarks on a Wittgensteinian Method: An Examination of J.F.M. Hunter's Essays After Wittgenstein’, read to the Canadian Philosophical Association, Toronto, 1974), rightly identifies this as the book's centrepiece, but he appears to mistake the paper's thrust at this point. He takes the rebuttal of the view we have called ‘P’ to be given on p. 122. In fact it occupies pp. 123–134. We shall return to Neilsen's Hunter.

3 Hacker, P.M.S., Insight and Illusion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 104.Google Scholar

4 Norman Malcolm, ‘Wittgenstein on the Nature of Mind’, in Studies in the Theory of Knowledge, ed. by Nicholas Rescher, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Series, No. 4 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), p. 29.

5 Davidson, Donald, ‘Truth and Meaning’, Synthese, 17 (1967), pp. 304323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dummett, Michael, Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth. 1973)Google Scholar.

I shall economize on footnotes by giving bibliographical details now of other works which I shall mention: Zeno Vendler, Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1972); Fraassen, Bas C. van, Formal Semantics and Logic (New York: Macmillan. 1971)Google Scholar; David Wiggins, ‘A Reply to Mr. Alston’, in Semantics, ed. by D.D. Steinberg and L.A. Jakobovits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); and Gilbert H. Harman, ‘Three Levels of Meaning’, in Semantics, etc.

6 Participants in the Philosophy Graduate Seminar at Dalhousie University (Autumn Term. 1974) studied this book with me. I am happy to acknowledge their great help.