Table Of ContentHOW I SEE PHILOSOPHY
By the same author
INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL THINKING
THE PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY
By the same editor
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LOGIC OF THE SCIENCES
THEORIES AND THINGS
MATTER AND METHOD
THE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE
How I See Philosophy
F. WAISMANN
LATE READER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
EDITED BY R. HARRE
FELLOW OF LINACRE COLLEGE
LECTURER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Palgrave Macmillan
© The Literary Executors of
F. Waismann, and R. Harre 1968
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1968
Published by
MACMILLAN AND CO LTD
Little Essex Street London wcz
and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras
Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg
The Macm£llan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne
The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Toronto
StMartin's Press Inc New York
Library of Congress catalog card no. 68-12306
ISBN 978-1-349-00104-0 ISBN 978-1-349-00102-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-00102-6
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Sources of the material viii
I HOW I SEE PHILOSOPHY I
II VERIFIABILITY 39
III ARE THERE ALTERNATIVE LOGICS? 67
I Preliminary remarks 67
2 The character of logic 68
3 Is a proposition always either true or false? 70
4 A counter example 7I
5 Partial negation 72
6 Strong and weak negation 75
7 Other senses of negation 79
8 Idealization 8o
9 Does the law of excluded middle apply to statements
about sense-impressions? 8o
IO The logic of sense-impressions 85
IV LANGUAGE STRATA 9I
PartOne 9I
Part Two 102
I Types of ambiguity I02
2 Language strata I08
3 Systematic ambiguity of truth and verifiability I I 2
4 Completeness u6
5 A new picture oflanguage u8
V ANALYTIC-SYNTHETIC I22
I What is 'analytic'? I22
2 Logical and idiomatic equivalence; definition and
substitution licence I33
3 More about 'definition' and 'analytic' I38
v
vi CONTENTS
4 Contingent and necessary
5 Ordinary language
6 The I - and It - aspect
VI THE DECLINE AND FALL OF CAUSALITY
INDEX 257
PREFACE
IN his Principles of Linguistic Philosophy Friedrich Waismann was
concerned to expound in as fully explicit and developed a form as
possible, the ideas of Wittgenstein. But even though that book was
meant as a textbook of Wittgensteinian philosophical method,
careful reading brings to light from time to time a hint of new ideas,
of a view of philosophy that while sibling to that of Wittgenstein, is
Waismann's own. In a series of papers, some of which appeared
while he was still working on the text of the Principles, Waismann
expounded his solutions to the problems which still perplexed
him.
In this volume are collected those of his published writings
which express his independent approach. Waismann's philosophy
has a sufficient unity of theme and method to allow his papers to be
put together comfortably as a single book, though they cover a
period of more than twenty years. It is hoped that the papers
collected here will not only recall him to his many pupils and
friends, but will enable those who never knew him to experience
something of that combination of richness of thought, subtlety of
expression and rigour of argument that was so characteristically
Waismann.
The editor and literary executors are grateful to the editors of
the following journals for permission to reprint Waismann's
papers: The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Synthese,
Analysis, and to George Allen & Unwin, for permission to reprint
pp. 447-490 from Contemporary British Philosophy, III, edited by
H. D. Lewis; to Basil Blackwell for permission to reprintpp. 11-31
from Logic and Language, Second Series, edited by A. G. N. Flew,
and to the North Holland Publishing Company for permission to
reprint pp. 84-154 from Turning Points in Physics, edited by
A. C. Crombie.
Minor corrections have been made to the texts, and, where they
exist, English editions of works originally cited under their German
or French titles, have been mentioned. My thanks are due to Mr
J. Moulder for his valuable assistance.
R. HARRE (Editor)
SOURCES OF THE MATERIAL
CHAPTER I
Contemporary British Philosophy, III, edited by H. D. Lewis,
London 1956, pp. 447-490.
CHAPTER II
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume XIX
(1945). pp. 119-150.
CHAPTER III
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, volume XLVI (1945-46),
pp. 77-104.
CHAPTER IV: Part One
Synthese, volume v (1946), pp. 219-219.
Part Two
Logic and Language, II, edited by A. G. N. Flew, Oxford 1953,
pp. II-31.
CHAPTER V
Analysis, IO. 2 (1949). pp. 25-40i II. 2 (1950), pp. 25-38; II. 3
(1951), pp. 49-61 j II. 6 (1951), pp. 115-124j IJ. I (1952), pp.
I-14i IJ. 4 (1953), pp. 73-89.
CHAPTER VI
Turning Points in Physics, edited by A. C. Crombie, Amsterdam
1959· pp. 84-154·
The paper 'The Relevance of Psychology to Logic', Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume XVII (1938), pp.
54-67, has not been included in this collection, not forming a
natural part ofWaismann's later philosophy.
CHAPTER I
HOW I SEE PHILOSOPHY
1. WHAT philosophy is? I don't know, nor have I a set formula
to offer. Immediately I sit down to contemplate the question I am
flooded with so many ideas, tumbling over one another, that I
cannot do justice to all of them. I can merely make an attempt, a
very inadequate one, to sketch with a few strokes what the lie of
the land seems to me to be, tracing some lines of thought without
entering upon a close-knit argument.
It is, perhaps, easier to say what philosophy is not than what it is.
The first thing, then, I should like to say is that philosophy, as it is
practised today, is very unlike science; and this in three respects:
in philosophy there are no proofs; there are no theorems; and there
are no questions which can be decided, Yes or No. In saying that
there are no proofs I do not mean to say that there are no argu
ments. Arguments certainly there are, and first-rate philosophers
are recognized by the originality of their arguments; only these do
not work in the sort of way they do in mathematics or in the
sciences.
There are many things beyond proof: the existence of material
objects, of other minds, indeed of the external world, the validity
of induction, and so on. Gone are the days when philosophers were
trying to prove all sorts of things: that the soul is immortal, that
this is the best of all possible worlds and the rest, or to refute, by
'irrefutable' argument and with relish, materialism, positivism and
what not. Proof, refutation-these are dying words in philosophy,
though G. E. Moore still 'proved' to a puzzled world that it exists.
What can one say to this - save, perhaps, that he is a great prover
before the Lord?
But can it be proved that there are no proofs in philosophy? No;
for one thing, such a proof, if it were possible, would by its very
existence establish what it was meant to confute. But why suppose
the philosopher to have an I.Q. so low as to be unable to learn from
the past? Just as the constant failure of attempts at constructing a
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