Overview

John Wisdom was Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University through the 1950s and 1960s, holding the chair that had been Wittgenstein's. Later he taught in America and was elected President of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division. This book is based on previously unpublished lectures that Wisdom delivered at the University of Virginia. Its context goes significantly beyond that of his other books. Here he is concerned with how misunderstandings about what it is to prove something or what it is to explain something can infect our thinking in many different fields. Wisdom develops a controversial account of what he calls ""case-by-case procedures"" as he tries to dispel those misunderstandings and illuminate the nature of proof and explanation, as these occur in physics, psychology, ethics and everyday situations.

Full Product Details

9780819180421

Table of Contents

Reviews

John Wisdom has a unique feeling for the depth of the things that people have at stake in advancing or rejecting positions in philosophy...a seductive analysis or exposition that lures the hearer or reader into a position at which the fatal weakness of all clockwork proofs and refutations becomes undeniable. The fundamental manner of arguing that was one of the impressive features of Wisdom's classes comes through unscathed.--Toulmin, Stephen

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available