Background
Malcolm, Norman was born in 1911 in Selden.
Malcolm, Norman was born in 1911 in Selden.
Universities of Nebraska. Harvard and Cambridge.
1940 2,Instructor, Princeton University. 1947-1950, Assistant Professor, 1950-1955, Associate Professor. 1950-1964, Professor of Philosophy, 1964-1978.
Susan Linn Sage Professor. 1979-1990, Visiting Professor. Cornell University; 1990, Fellow.
King's College. London.
Main publications:
(1958) Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, with a biographical sketch by G. H. von Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press
second edition, with Wittgenstein’s letters to Malcolm, 1984.
(1962) Dreaming, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
(1963) Knowledge and Certainty: Essays and Lectures, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
(1971) Problems of Mind: Descartes to Wittgenstein.
New York: Harper & Row.
(1977) Memory and Mind. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
(1977) Thought and Knowledge, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
(1984) (with D. M. Armstrong) Consciousness and Causality: A Debate on the Nature of Mind. Oxford ■ Basil Blackwell.
(1986) Nothing is Hidden: Wittgensteins Criticism of His Early Thought, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
(1993) Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, London: Routledge.
(1995) Wittgensteinian Themes, Essays 1978-1989, ed. G. H. von Wright. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Secondary literature:
Putnam, Hilary, (1962) Dreaming and depth grammar, in R. Butler (ed.) Analytical Philosophy. f‘rsl Series, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Malcolm's earliest work—and possibly some of his best—minutely analysed and rejected the argument, commonly propounded by episternologists from Hume onwards, that no empiric31 judgement can be known for certain to be true since future experience may always give us reason to think it false. One of the most discussed of Malcolm’s works, however, was his book Dreaming (1962). in which he argued that dreams are not mental experiences that take place during sleepThe idea that they are such mental experiences is an incoherent theory generated by the desire to explain a phenomenon that has no explanation, namely that ‘sometimes when people wake up they relate stories in the past tense under the influence of an impression’.
In an influential article, Malcolm argued that one version of the ontological argument for the existence of God is in fact valid—a view almost universally rejected since Kant. His argument tested upon the idea that the reality of God’s existence is to be found in the ‘language games’ of religious believers, and that one of those ‘language games’ involves the concept of a God who has necessary existence’.
The influence of G. E. Moore on Malcolm is dear in his constant attempt to recall philosophers to ordinary language.
And the influence of " 'ttgenstein is clear in his underlying belief that °ur only access to reality, whether the reality of God or of mental phenomena such as dreams, is through human linguistic practices. The influence °f both is clear in his sympathy with the deliverances of common sense, and it is on these foundations of his philosophical work that most criticism of Malcolm has focused.