[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein on Inner/Outer and Behaviorism
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 10:20:07 -0700 (PDT)
(Reply to Stuart)
... I had not realized that these remarks on psychology were so voluminous. All
I have on my shelf are the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume II.
I'm such an idiot, I didn't even realize that they were "Volume II."
What happened is this: I am revising a conference paper dealing with
Wittgenstein's views on aesthetics and Dworkin's views about legal
interpretation. In doing this paper, one of my central theses
about Wittgenstein's approach to aesthetical judgments was that it is only an
example of a more general approach to all sorts of things. In short, he is
describing a kind of judgment (or cognition) used for all sorts of things in
life. Take, for example, Wittgenstein's approach to "knowing others"
(imponderable evidence). Simply, the way that one knows how to appreciate a
Beethoven is the same (or very similar) to the way that one knows his or her
child. So, as I was doing my paper, I was re-reading Monk's Chapter 11 in How
To Read Wittgenstein, which is important for me. Previously, when Monk had
cited to Wittgenstein's Remarks on Psychology, I hadn't paid attention to which
works he was talking about. When checking quotes and sources for my paper,
however, I had noticed something peculiar: there was something called "last
writings on" philosophy of psychology which were different from,
simply, "remarks on." So I got curious.
Long story short: I just bought 3 books: (a) Remarks, Volume I; (b) Last
writings, Volume I; and (c) Last writings, Volume II. (I already have Remarks,
volume II).
One of the things that should perhaps be kept in mind is that the last
writings, volume II, appears to be manuscripts (looking at the table of
contents). One should always keep in mind whether published
Wittgenstein-offerings are straight from notebooks (e.g., On
Certainty), are from manuscripts, or are from a typescript. As I
understand this from Monk's biography, a manuscript would be considered a
middle-level stage in how he "brought his thoughts to market," so to speak. So,
last writings, vol. 2, should be a collection of notebook writings that
predated the manuscript date, and which were organized, changed, altered and
added to, by him at or around the manuscript date. What I am trying to caution
against is the idea that all the thoughts came out spontaneously in 1949, or
whatever. What came out then would have been effort to create the manuscript
out of what existed in the notebooks and what not (adding, changing, splicing,
etc). One assumes that, had Wittgenstein lived 5 more years, he would have
generated a typescript for all of the psychological writings. Typescripts were,
essentially, book drafts.
(Again, my knowledge of this comes from Monk's biography. I need to look more
carefully at the actual library of Wittgenstein's writings which are now online
so that I can more directly talk about this stuff.)
Anywhoo, will read "latest writings" when it comes in the mail!
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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