Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 151 as the basis of descriptive functions, one-one relations as the basis of Russell's construction of cardinals, and serial relations as the basis, e.g., of progressions and the natural numbers--were particularly important in this phase. The author is also critical of how Russell's views in this phase have been misunderstood by Imre Lakatos and others. The empiricist phase, the author notes, was "marked by a retreat from the realism of subsistent being" that was characterisitic of the Platonist phase (49). It is also noted that Russell's construction in this phase of a neo-Leibnizian three-dimensional world of perspectives of sensibilia, some but not all of which are perceived by subjects, depends essentially on spatial and temporal relations. The modified empiricist phase, finally, is marked by the "the inescapable necessity of postulating inferred (or nonexperienced) entities"--namely, events--and the abandonment of the relational theory of sensation (56). It is in this phase that Russell adopts the doctrine of neutral monism. In Part II the author explains how the changes in Russell's theories of space and time are the "key" to the changes in his philosophy. Each of the four phases of development in Russell's philosophy are characterized by a different theory of space and time. The author traces these changes to Russell's "continuing efforts to provide an alternative to Kant" with respect to the need to bridge appearance and reality (~79). Just as Kant's philosophy is an attempt to reconcile British empiricism and Continental rationalism, Russell's philosophy is an attempt to reconcile empiricism and rationalism--but with rationalism based on the newly developing field of mathematical logic and the Kantian subject-predicate form replaced by relational propositions. Also, unlike Kant, Russell rejected the category of substance and denied that space, time, and relations are restricted to the phenomenal world of appearance. For Russell, qualities are subjective (secondary), but the relations between their instances correspond to the structure of the external world. Subjective space and time are correlated by Russell with different entities in the three post-idealist phases of his philosophy, resulting in this way in different theories of space and time and the bridge between appearance and reality. NINO B. COCCHIARELLA Indiana University David G. Stern. Wittgenstein on Mind and Language. Oxford University Press, 1995. PPxii + ~26. Cloth, $39"95Stern 's book is ferociously well-researched. Though it covers little of Wittgenstein's mature philosophy (from the time of the writing of Philosophical Investigations [PI] onward), it has much to offer, especially on what is sometimes Called Wittgenstein's "transitional" period (1929-c.1933), of which Stern may have given us a neardefinitive rendering. But one should note that Wittgenstein on Mind and Langauge is not exactly what it sounds like from the title; the research is not toward a philosophical account of Wittgenstein 's philosophy of language/mind. For in practice Stern's chief interest is figuring out the development of Wittgenstein's thoughts on topics in mind and language, not in offering/supporting the best available reading of his texts. In short, Stern's pretty- 159 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:1 JANUARY 1997 exhaustive Nachl~s-based research largely services a study of part of the temporal development of the man Wittgenstein's philosophical thought. While Stern clarifies parts of the early Wittgensteinian "system" (e.g., the highly, deliberately abstract conceptualization of "objects" in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicu~ [T L-P]), he often follows Wittgenstein in the one respect in which arguably one ought not to: in interpreting uncharitably his (own) work. Stern generally accepts at something like face-value the scorn heaped by Wittgenstein's later self on "the author of T L-P," failing to assess whether the letter of the text is guilty as charged. This is particularly problematic in that Wittgenstein repeatedly projected "positions" contemplated during his "transitional period" back onto"T L-P. I think Stern misses an opportunity here; one has to read between Stern's lines to see how tendentious much of Wittgenstein 's philosophical self-criticism is. Perhaps a deeper difficulty, and the one on which I concentrate in this review, is...