Written within the tradition of Wittgenstein's work, these eight original essays in philosophical psychology are either by-products of efforts to understand Wittgenstein's later writings or applications of techniques and approaches derived from Wittgenstein to problems about which he did not say a great deal.

In much of his later writings, Wittgenstein was not so much trying to explain his own views as to tease, annoy, and confuse the reader into working our for himself solutions to some philosophical problems. Professor Hunter, goaded and guided by Wittgenstein, here presents in clear and plain prose the views that he has worked out on a number of different questions. Although the essays are not exegetical in form, they will be found by students of the great philosopher to contain a large number of novel suggestions as to how Wittgenstein might be interpreted; philosophers, psychologists, linguists, and mathematicians are offered an unconventional, interesting, and richly argued approach to some of the main problems in philosophical psychology.

The essays treat Meaning, Telling, Pain, Logical Compulsion, Identity, Imagining, Dreaming, and Talking. One eminent scholar has predicted that this volume may reverse the present tendency of philosophers to follow the lead of Noam Chomsky in the philosophy of language.

J.F.M. Hunter was a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.

J.F.M. Hunter's profile page