John Wisdom

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

Life

Wisdom came from an Anglican family of pastors. John attended Aldeburgh Lodge School and temporarily Monkton Combe School in Somerset. In 1921 he was accepted as a student at Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge, where he studied moral philosophy and attended lectures with GE Moore , CD Broad , and John McTaggart . After completing his BA in 1924, he worked for five years at the British National Institute of Industrial Psychology before he was appointed lecturer in the Department of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of St Andrews in 1929 . Through his early publications, Wisdom gained widespread recognition as a representative of analytical philosophy in the style of Russel, Moore, and von Wittgenstein's early work. In 1934 Wisdom became a lecturer in practical philosophy at Cambridge and finally a 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. Since Wittgenstein published little or nothing in those years, Wisdom's writings were considered canonical texts of analytic philosophy. In 1952, Wisdom Wittgenstein followed the chair of professor of philosophy. In 1968 he resigned from this chair to accept a professorship at the University of Oregon . He resided in Cambridge from his retirement until his death in 1993. In 1978 Fitzwilliam College made him an honorary fellow. He died on December 9, 1993.

Wisdom was married twice. In 1929 he married the South African singer Molly Iverson, and they had a son, Thomas, who was born in 1932. During the World War II the couple separated, Molly and Thomas emigrated to Canada while Wisdom lived in London. The long separation, however, led to a divorce. In 1950 Wisdom married again, namely the painter Pamela Elspeth Strain (1914 / 15–1989).

plant

With Problems of Mind and Matter (1934) Wisdom offers an introduction to the method of language analysis, which also dealt with his academic teachers. During the first years in Cambridge, Wisdom was strongly influenced by his contact with Wittgenstein, who at that time was already working on his criticism of traditional metaphysics and the 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 work combines Wittgenstein's language analysis with Moore's common sense approach. His early essay “Philosophical Perplexity” already presents Wisdom's methodical approach: Although he shares Wittgenstein's thesis that philosophical problems can be made to disappear by analyzing and correcting the use of language, he speaks metaphysical statements that have no clear empirical content, nevertheless a positive one Role as long as they are not direct errors. According to him, such errors are based on the confusion of linguistically similar expressions with philosophically very different functions ( homonymy in the broader sense). So it is for Wisdom z. B. useful to doubt the existence of a single fact, but not useful to doubt the reality of the outside world. On this point, he clearly distinguishes himself from Wittgenstein, who, in Wisdom's opinion, presents metaphysics “too much as a mere symptom of linguistic confusion. [Wisdom wanted] to present them as symptoms of linguistic penetration "( John Wisdom : Philosophical Perplexity in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 16, 1936 , German:" Wittgenstein too much represents [metaphysical theories] as merely symptoms of linguistic confusion. I wish to represent them as also symptoms of linguistic penetration "). With this penetration, he was primarily concerned with 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 to the determination of (empirical) facts. In metaphysical debates, Wisdom saw a dialectic between realistic and skeptical-revisionist positions at work. The position of naive realism, although distinguishing between different types of propositions, does not examine their logical relationships, but considers them all to be fundamental. This creates a skepticism that tries to reduce the types of proposition to one another in the sense of language analysis. Finally, the debate culminates in the synthesis of a “penetration” project. According to Wisdom, this model is relevant for all metaphysical debates (cf. 'Metaphysics and verification', Mind 47, 1938; reprint in J. Wisdom, Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis , 1953), as he himself uses the example of the philosophy of mind tried to show ( Other Minds , 1952).

Philosophical problems and paradoxes cannot be solved empirically or formally logically, but for Wisdom they have the purpose of triggering a reflection on the limitations of language, which lead to joint decisions about changing and correcting the use of language. Here Wisdom finds an analogy between philosophical language analysis and psychoanalysis. Unsolved philosophical problems correspond to neurotic behavior that, while not fulfilling its immediate goal, draws attention to deeper problems and mechanisms when you insist on fulfillment or solution. Paradoxical and absurd answers to philosophical problems are therefore to be taken seriously for Wisdom and it is to be examined on which evaluations they are based and how these judgments and feelings are differentiated into reasonable and unreasonable ones, which are formed when the individual facts about the world are already established . In Wisdom's understanding, philosophy primarily has the task of reflexively working out the relative a priori of these attitudes. In addition to the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable, the distinction between unproblematic (clearly true or false) and problematic ascriptions is also relevant. According to Wisdom, these distinctions are more basic than clear definitions as the older analytical philosophy strived for. It is therefore necessary for Widsom to consider the individual possible and real cases in which the power of judgment decides, and to regard 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 1960s, it is hardly mentioned in current overview presentations. The publication of Wittgenstein's literary works and the rise of the more formal-linguistic 'Oxford School' of natural language philosophy began to overshadow him, and debates within analytic philosophy took on a direction different from Wisdom, without its subtle, non-naturalistic Position would have been outdated.

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)

literature

• Bruno Brülisauer: John Wisdom. About the attempt to rehabilitate philosophy from language-analytical thinking. Publishing house for law and society, Basel 1973.
• Wisdom. Twelve essays. Edited by Renford Bambrough . Blackwell, Oxford 1974. - (Festschrift for John Wisdom). - Review by Godfrey Vesey, in: Mind New Series, Vol. 85, No. 337 (Jan. 1976), pp. 124-126, online .
• Michael Ayers: Wisdom, (Arthur) John Terence Dibben (1904–1993) , in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004, available online .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Michael Ayers, 'Wisdom, (Arthur) John Terence Dibben (1904–1993)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 23 Sept. 2011
2. ↑ ^{a b} Garth Kemerling Analysis of Ordinary Language - with a section on Wisdom on philosophypages.com