John Wisdom

Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom, better known as John Wisdom ( born September 12, 1904 in Leyton, Essex, † December 9, 1993 in Cambridge ) was a leading British philosopher in the fields of philosophy of natural language, the philosophy of mind and of metaphysics. His work shows strong influences of the theories of George Edward Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud, and vice versa can be considered as extension, interpretation and combination of these theories.

Life

Wisdom came from an Anglican pastor's family. John attended the Aldeburgh Lodge School and temporarily Monkton Combe School in Somerset. In 1921 he was admitted as a student in the Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge, where he studied moral philosophy and lectures by GE Moore, CD Broad, and John McTaggart visited. After the BA degree in 1924, he was employed for five years at the UK National Institute of Industrial Psychology, before a lecturer site received at the Department of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of St Andrews 1929. By his early publications Wisdom gained widespread recognition as representatives of analytical philosophy in the style of Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein's early work from. 1934 Wisdom Lecturer in Practical Philosophy at Cambridge and finally fellow at Trinity College (Cambridge), which brought him into close contact with Wittgenstein, who had already turned away from the logical atomism of his early writings. As Wittgenstein published during these years little or nothing, at that time were mainly Wisdoms writings as canonical texts of analytic philosophy. In 1952 Wisdom Wittgenstein followed by the chair of the professor of philosophy. In 1968 he resigned from this chair to accept a professorship at the University of Oregon. Since his retirement he lived again in Cambridge until his death in 1993. 1978 appointed him the Fitzwilliam College Fellow honorary. He died on 9 December 1993.

Wisdom was married twice. In 1929 he married the South African singer Molly Iverson, a common son, Thomas, was born in 1932. During the years of World War II, the couple, Molly and Thomas parted emigrated to Canada, while Wisdom lived in London. However, the long separation led to a divorce. In 1950, Wisdom married again, this time the painter Pamela Elspeth Strain ( 1914/15-1989 ).

Work

With Problems of Mind and Matter (1934 ) Wisdom provides an introduction to the method of linguistic analysis, which grappled with his academic teachers. During the first years in Cambridge Wisdom was strongly influenced by contact with Wittgenstein, who by this time, was working on his critique of traditional metaphysics and logical atomism, which he himself had co-founded. Wisdom essays from this period often refer to Wittgenstein's new, as yet unpublished position.

Wisdom's works combine the linguistic analysis of Wittgenstein with the common sense approach of Moore. His early essay " Philosophical Perplexity " represents Wisdoms methodological approach already: even though he shares Wittgenstein's thesis that philosophical problems can be made ​​to disappear by analysis and correction of language use, he speaks metaphysical statements that have no clear empirical content, but a positive role to play, as long as they do not pose immediate errors. Such errors are based according to him, to the confusion linguistically similar expressions with philosophically very different functions ( homonymy in the broader sense ). So it is for Wisdom, for example, sense to doubt the existence of a single Faktums, but not useful to doubt the reality of the external world. On this point he distinguishes itself clearly from Wittgenstein, too much is the Wisdom's opinion metaphysics " as a mere symptom of linguistic confusion. [ Wisdom wanted ] they represent as well as symptoms of linguistic penetration ". This penetration it was him all about the distinction between different types of propositions and the epistemic and logical mechanisms that express them, in contrast to the older language analysis of logical positivism which wanted to reduce all propositions on the determination of ( empirical ) facts. In metaphysical debates Wisdom saw a dialectic between realistic and skeptical, revisionist positions at work. Although the position of naive realism distinguishes between different types of propositions, but does not investigate their logical relations, but keeps it all for basal. This causes a skepticism which successive attempts to reduce the Propositionsarten the purposes of linguistic analysis. Finally, the debate results in the synthesis of a project of " penetration". This model is by Wisdom for all metaphysical debates relevant (see, ' Metaphysics and verification ', Mind 47, 1938, emphasis in J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis, 1953), as he himself the example of the philosophy of mind show tried ( Other Minds, 1952).

Although philosophical problems and paradoxes can not be resolved empirically or formal logic, but they have Wisdom for the purpose of initiating a reflection on the limitations of the language, which lead to joint decisions about the change and correction of language use. Here Wisdom is an analogy between philosophical speech analysis and Psychoanalayse. Unresolved philosophical problems correspond to a neurotic behavior that does not meet their immediate aim, but the view of deeper problems and mechanisms directs, if you insist on a performance or solution. Paradoxical and absurd answers to philosophical problems are therefore to be taken seriously for Wisdom and is to investigate to which reviews they are based and how these judgments and feelings differ in rational and irrational, which are formed when the individual facts about the world have already been established. In Wisdom's understanding of philosophy has mainly the task of the relative a priori these settings work out reflexively. Apart from the distinction reasonable / unreasonable, therefore, the distinction between non-problematic ( clearly true or false ) and problematic attributions is relevant. These distinctions are after Wisdom basal as clear definitions as they aimed at the older Analytic Philosophy. It is therefore for Widsom necessary to consider the individual potential and real cases in which the judgment decides, and to consider general rules as secondary ( as in J. Wisdom, Proof and Explanation: the Virginia lectures, ed S. Barker, 1991).

Effect

While Wisdom was one of the most important representatives of analytical philosophy in the 60s of the 20th century, he finds in recent overviews hardly mention. The publication of Wittgenstein's estate works and the rise of more formal- linguistic ' Oxford School ' of philosophy of natural language began to overshadow him and the debate within analytic philosophy took on a different of Wisdom direction without its subtle, non- naturalistic position would have been obsolete.

Major works

• Interpretation and Analysis. (1931 )
• Problems of Mind and Matter. (1934 )
• Philosophical Perplexity, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. 1936-37.
• Other Minds. (1952)
• Philosophy & Psychoanalysis. (1953)
• Paradox and Discovery. (1965)
• Proof and Explanation ( The Virginia Lectures 1957). (1991)