(At a time when interest in the Wittgensteinian tradition ...)
At a time when interest in the Wittgensteinian tradition has quickened, this volume brings together fourteen essays by Norman Malcolm, a prominent philosopher who studied with Wittgenstein. Including some of Malcolm's last work, the papers address key aspects of Wittgenstein's legacy. Wittgensteinian Themes demonstrates the clarity and accessibility for which Malcolm's writing is renowned. Like most of his work, the essays examine basic issues in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Himself a noted philosopher, Georg Henrik von Wright has chosen the papers included here and appended to the volume his eloquent Memorial Address for Norman Malcolm, delivered at King's College, London, in November 1990. Professor von Wright has also supplied a brief preface.
(This volume distinguishes between two main traditions in ...)
This volume distinguishes between two main traditions in the philosophy of science - the aristotelian, with its stress on explanation in terms of purpose and intentionality, and the galilean, which takes causal explanation as primary. It then traces the complex history of these competing traditions as they are manifested in such movements as positivism, idealism, Marxism and contemporary linguistic analysis. Hempels's theory of scientific explanation, the claims of cybernetics the rise of an analytic philosophy of action and the revival of hermenuetics are all discussed. The volume also deals with causal explanation, intentionality and teleological explanation, and explanation in history and the social sciences. The author concludes that explanation of human actions cannot be reduced to simple causality, and discusses the implications of this conclusion for the disciplines of history and sociology.
In the Shadow of Descartes: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Synthese Library)
(Descartes made a sharp distinction between matter and min...)
Descartes made a sharp distinction between matter and mind. But he also thought that the two interact with one another. Is such interaction possible, however, without either a materialist reduction of mind to matter or an idealist (phenomenalist) reduction of matter to mind? These questions overshadow the Western tradition in metaphysics from the time of Descartes to present times. The book makes an effort to stay clear of reductivist views of the two Cartesian substances. It defends a dualistic psycho-physical parallel theory which reconciles freedom of action with determinism in nature. Basic problems in perception theory are also discussed, with special emphasis on hearing and sound. Because of the intrinsic interest of the subject and the author's non-technical presentation of it, the book should appeal to all readers with a serious interest in philosophy and psychology.
Georg Henrik von Wright had a reputation as one of the modern era’s foremost scholars in the discipline of philosophy. He also wrote and edited numerous works in the field.
Background
Ethnicity:
Von Wright was of both Finnish and 17th-century Scottish ancestry.
Georg Wright was born on June 14, 1916 in Helsinki, Finland to Tor and Ragni Elisabeth (Alfthan) von Wright.
Education
Georg Wright received degree from the University of Helsinki. He was educated there from 1934 to 1937, majoring in philosophy, history and political science, with mathematics as a minor subject.
In the last year of his life, he received several honorary degrees, including an honorary degree from the University of Bergen.
Wright began his career in 1943 as a professor at his alma mater, the University of Helsinki, holding a position for a long period of time – from 1943 till 1961. He also taught at Cambridge University for 3 years from 1948.
Since 1961 Wright has been a research professor with the Academy of Finland, where he remained until 1986, but he had also served as chancellor of Abo Academy for almost ten years from 1968. Wright was also professor-at-large at Cornell University from 1965 to 1977.
Wright has devoted much of his career to advancing the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher who died in 1951. Wittgenstein made significant contributions to the branch of philosophy known as logical positivism, which attempts to use the precision of mathematics to clarify abstract ideas. In addition to his own writing, Wright has edited numerous volumes of Wittgenstein’s writings, including the 1967 tome Zettel. Among numerous other volumes, Wright has also served as the editor of one of Wittgenstein’s first major works, Prototractatus: An Early Version of Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. He shares credit for the editorship of the 1971 volume with B. F. McGuinness and T. Nyberg.
In his own research and writing, Wright has published several works in English. Much of it is concerned with deontic logic, or the study of moral and legal obligations. He has also explored the field of induction, which entails making generalizations about a group based on the study of a representative sampling; it is the opposite of “deductive” reasoning. A representative sampling of Wright’s own scholarship can be found in the volumes Logical Studies and Philosophical Logic. Many of the studies are concerned with various paradoxes, or riddles that philosophers use to discuss concepts. Other essays look at modal logic (the use of such modifying language elements as “possibly” and “necessary”), and perceptions of time and space.
Wright was a president of such organizations as the European Academy of Arts, Science, and Humanities and Philosophical Society of Finland.
He was also a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, New Society of Letters (Lund), British Academy, Royal Danish Academy of Science, Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (Uppsala, Sweden), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Royal Academy of Science (Trondheim, Norway), and an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Finnish Society of Science
,
Finland
1966 - 1967
Finnish Society of Science
,
Finland
1978
Institut Internationale de Philosophic
,
Paris
1975 - 1978
International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
1963 - 1965
Connections
Wright married Baroness Marie Elisabeth von Troil on May 31, 1941. They had a son and a daughter.
Father:
Tor von Wright
Mother:
Ragni Elisabeth (Alfthan) Wright
Wife:
Marie Elisabeth von Troil
References
The Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright (Library of Living Philosophers)
Georg Henrik von Wright, born in Helsinki in 1916, is the most renowned Scandinavian philosopher of our time, and an outstanding contributor to many fields of philosophy. He has made important contributions to logical theory and extended the application of logic to new areas, making path-breaking discoveries in probability theory, induction, causation and determinism, human action, and ethics. This work contains von Wright's intellectual autobiography, 32 major criticisms of his ideas, and von Wright's replies to each of these papers, followed by a complete bibliography of his works.