Spring
2009 (date to be confirmed)
Second lecture of the BWS Ludwig Wittgenstein Lecture
Series
Speaker: Paul
Horwich
Title: Rorty's Wittgenstein
Abstract: An exposition and critique of Richard
Rorty's view that what is of most value in Wittgenstein's
mature writings is his pragmatically-oriented theory of
language, and that the passages suggesting an
anti-theoretical, pro-therapeutic perspective on philosophy
ought to be dismissed.
Venue: the University
of Hertfordshire, (de Havilland Campus, Room tba)
Time: 5 p.m. (a wine reception will follow)
How
to get to the venue
campus map
The event is free, but registration is required. Please email bws@herts.ac.uk
Paul Horwich is a Professor of Philosophy at New York
University. His work includes writings on scientific
methodology, time, truth, and meaning.
Horwich earned his PhD from Cornell University. He has
previously taught at MIT, University College London, and CUNY
Graduate Center.
Horwich is working on a book, provisionally entitled, Wittgenstein's
Metaphilosophy, which he hopes to have finished by next
summer. Its aims are, first, to elaborate and defend
Wittgenstein's distinctive hyper-deflationary account of where
philosophical problems come from, how they should be
addressed, and what such endeavors can accomplish; and second
to show how this perspective is required in order to make
sense of his discussions of meaning and of sensation in the Philosophical
Investigations.
His works include Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990,
2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1998), which presented a
detailed defense of the minimalistic variant of the
deflationary theory of truth. He is opposed to appealing to
reference and truth to explicate meaning, and so has defended
a use theory of meaning in his book Meaning (Oxford
University Press, 1998), and in his latest book, Reflections
on Meaning (Oxford University Press, 2005). His other
books are: Probability and Evidence (Cambridge
University Press, 1982), Asymmetries in Time: Problems in
the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1987), and From a Deflationary Point of View (Oxford
University Press, 2004). He is also the editor of World
Changes:Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1993).
