This book investigates dispositions in grammatical-normative terms through a contrast between a naturalized paradigm and a Wittgenstein-inspired perspective. The book presents a conceptual analysis of the notion of disposition informed by Wittgenstein's and Ryle's philosophies to defend a normative notion of disposition. The book opens with a presentation of the current naturalized paradigm on dispositions, focusing on its main presuppositions and limits. It then turns to the discussion of a Wittgensteinian-inspired dispositionalism of knowing and understanding, before filling the exegetical gap about Wittgenstein's own use of the notion of disposition. The author critically engages with the current paradigm using Ryle's notion of category mistake, before concluding with a presentation of some philosophical views where a notion of normative disposition is employed. This book is essential reading for anyone searching for a new perspective on dispositions and will broaden the appeal of the Wittgensteinian tradition within contemporary analytic philosophy and, potentially, psychology as well.

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy.

Wittgenstein's aphoristic style holds great charm, but also a great danger: the reader is apt to glean too much from a single fragment and too little from the fragments as a whole. In my first confron tations with the Philosophical Investigations I was such a reader, and so, it turned out, were most of the writers on Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Wittgenstein's remarkable ability to bring together many facets of his thought in one fragment is fully exploited in the critical literature; but hardly any attention is paid to the connection with other fragments, let alone to the many hitherto unpublished manuscripts of which the Philosophical Investigations is the final product. The result of this fragmentary and ahistorical approach to Wittgenstein's later work is a host of contradictory interpretations. What Wittgenstein really wanted to say remains insufficiently clear. Opinions are also strongly divided about the value of his work. Some authors have been encouraged by his aphorisms and rhetorical questions to dismiss the whole Cartesian tradition or to halt new movements in linguistics or psychology; others, exasperated, reject his philo sophy as anti-scientific conceptual conservatism. After consulting unpublished notebooks and manuscripts which Wittgenstein wrote between 1929 and 1951, I became a very different reader. Wittgenstein turned out to be a kind of Leonardo da Vinci, who pursued a form from which every sign of chisel ling, every attempt at improvement, had been effaced.

This edited volume includes contributions from internationally renowned experts in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It applies his later philosophy to concrete issues pertaining to the integrity of scientific claims in a broad spectrum of research domains within contemporary psychology.

Clearly and simply written, this book provides the first consistent sociological reading of Wittgenstein's work for many years.

Provides new interpretations and applications of Wittgenstein's philosophy in relation to fundamental issues in contemporary theoretical debates.