Great Ideas of Philosophy

1. Personal identity? Wittgenstein recalls Aristotle: Our names for ourselves—baker, Christian, father,child—do not inhere in us biologically.2. Gender (though not sex), nationality, morality—the authority and creativity to bring about suchidentities—is social.3. Wittgenstein offers that once this is understood, the fly might find the way out of the bottle—orTheseus out of the labyrinth.VI. The problem of knowledge now becomes part of a language game. It becomes a problem of meaning, andwhat’s called for here is an essentially linguistic analysis, rather than an epistemology or metaphysics.Metaphysics is built up linguistically.A. Wittgenstein was keen to note that his purpose was not to solve problems but to show the fly the way outof the bottle.B. This is not to change the nature of the fly. Out of the bottle, it’s still a fly. Out of the bottle, it’s still anentity that might be attracted to sweet things in the bottom of some other bottle. As Wittgenstein says in thePhilosophical Investigations:Think of the tools in a toolbox; there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a ruler, a glue-pot, nailsand screw…. The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects… It is easy to imaginea language consisting only of orders and reports in battle…. Or a language consisting only of questions andexpressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others—and to imagine a language means toimagine a form of life.Recommended Reading:Budd, M. Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology. London, 1989.Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell, 1997.Questions to Consider:1. If the contents of the mind are not “private,” infer just what is the domain reached by introspection.2. Conclude whether there are no natural constraints on what things might mean.3. Summarize whether philosophy is simply (or not so simply) a kind of word game.34©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership