This book considers the important twentieth century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his conception of certainty. In his work entitled On Certainty, Wittgenstein provides not only a brilliant solution to a previously intractable philosophical problem, but also the elements of an entirely new way of approaching this and similar longstanding, apparently unresolvable, problems. In On Certainty, he re-conceives the problem of radical skepticism-the claim that we can never really be certain of anything except the contents of our own minds-as a kind of philosophical "disease" of thought. His approach to the problem, which is emphasized in the book, is similar to the treatment of disease, has two main goals: (1) bring about an awareness in the philosopher that this kind of extreme skepticism is not a methodological approach to be taken seriously, and, with this awareness, (2) an attempt to replace thisradical skepticism with a practical, Common Sense framework. Implicit in Wittgenstein's approach are a number of strategies found in a contemporary approach to psychotherapy known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). These strategies, along with philosophical methods and scientific practices rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense, seek to diagnose and treat irrational thoughts and beliefs that often emerge (and re-emerge) in the discipline of philosophy. The aim of this book, then, is to provide students of philosophy with the tools necessary to adjust and reshape these irrational, self-defeating thoughts and beliefs into something new, something healthy

Autorentext

Robert Greenleaf Brice is a Full-Time Lecturer in the Philosophy Program at Northern Kentucky University. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Houston and received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Michigan State University. He has published a number of articles on Wittgenstein's application of certainty. He is also the author of Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought.

Inhalt
  1    On Certainty**: Scholarship, Development, and Placement**.

      1.1          Can We Know Anything With Certainty?..................................................       1.2          The 3 Phases of On Certainty Scholarship..

      1.3          How On Certainty Came to be Written       1.4          Where On Certainty Fits in the Canon.

      1.5          Resisting Our Natural Biases

      1.6          Wittgenstein's Therapeutic Approach & Scholarship..       References

2    Philosophical Therapy.

2.1          What is Philosophical Therapy?..................................................................

2.2          Tracing the Roots of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

2.3          Possible Criticisms & Replies.. 2.4          Challenges of the Method

References...

3    Background to On Certainty.    

      3.1           Descartes, Moore, and Wittgenstein.    

      3.2           Descartes and the Problem of Skepticism.   

      3.3           Moore's Common Sense Reply to Cartesian Skepticism.     

      3.4           Problems in Moore's Proof Of An External World...

      3.5          Wittgenstein's Therapeutic Conception of Philosophy.

      References

4    Philosophical Therapy: A Cure for Our Philosophical Disease ****       4.1        &nb...